After the first tutorial about synching browser favourites across devices using Live Mesh, we thought it was time to step it up a gear and take on Windows Live Messenger. Its always been notoriously difficult to transfer emoticons between PCs, let alone backup the winks, DDPs and dynamic backgrounds you may have. This method will sync all of the above, and if you want to, synchronise your file transfers and chat history too.
Here’s some points before we start the synching. Please read, as they are important!
1. This has only been tested on Windows Live Messenger 8.1 and above, as prior to this content was stored in a different way. It doesn’t matter if you are using different versions on different devices. The folders we will be synchronising are:
Vista: <Users>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Messenger
XP: Documents and Settings\<Users>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Messenger
From now on, we’ll call this the “Messenger folder”.
2. Backup all of the files being synchronised before starting.
3. We recommend disabling Sharing Folders.
4. Synchronising between two devices with existing Messenger installations will give a lot of unresolved conflicts, due to the default content Microsoft provides for new installations. To avoid this, delete the Messenger folder (recycle bin please!) on device 2 before synchronising. Obviously this works best if device 2 has a new installation - if its an existing installation, then you’ll need to manually resolve the conflicts during the sync process .
5. Close down all instances of Messenger until the Mesh synchronisation is fully complete. More about that later.
With the parachute check complete, lets make the jump.