Q: Is there a way to upgrade PDF Studio to the latest major version silently, for installations throughout an organization? We would like to register each user and maintain user settings before removing the previous old version.
A: PDF Studio can be installed and registered programmatically without requiring user input on user machine. You can also uninstall the previous version quietly without user input.
To maintain the user settings across versions you will need to create a script to copy and rename the previous version settings folder for each user. This process cannot be automated through our installer because PDF Studio prioritizes using the “Default” settings in the installation directory for users as a way for organizations to set specific settings for each user based on company policies.
How to Silently Upgrade PDF Studio to Next Major Release Version
Use the instructions below to silently upgrade existing users to the next major version (i.e. from version 2020 to version 2021) in large deployments.
- Follow the instructions on our page here to Install & Register PDF Studio through command-line
- Then silently uninstall the previous version by following the instructions found here: PDF Studio Silent Un-installation through command line
- Choose how you want to handle user settings following the instructions below
New Defaults
To have all user’s previous settings removed and use new system defaults follow the instructions below:
- Install the application as instructed above
- Launch PDF Studio on an IT or Admin account and set any preferences you wish to use
- Completely EXIT PDF Studio (File Tab -> Exit)
- Make a copy of all the settings files you wish to set as defaults and put them in the “Defaults” folder of the installation directory
When PDF Studio is launched for the first time by a user, PDF Studio will load any default settings from the Defaults directory to use on first launch. Then when the user exits those settings are written out to their individual user settings folders to use going forward.
Retain Old User Settings
To retain the user’s existing settings from the previous version you will need to manually copy the old settings to the new version using a custom script or command line calls.
- Locate the user settings for the previous version (see Where and What are the settings files for PDF Studio?)
- Settings files for PDF Studio are saved in your user home folder, under a directory called .pdfstudio[version], where [version] is the version of PDF Studio you have installed.
- Copy this directory and then rename it to the version of PDF Studio being installed.
- For example if upgrading from PDF Studio 2020 to PDF Studio 2021 you will rename the “.pdfstudio2020” settings folder to “.pdfstudio2021“
- Delete the license key file “.pdfstudio” from the new version directory
When PDF Studio is launched by the user, PDF Studio will then load the previous version settings to use going forward.
