Background

Resetting MicroStation's preference data will reset the customized tools/menu layout as well as the user preferences set in several menus (DWG save options, Personal Preferences menu, etc.) to factory default settings. By following the procedure below, you can create a backup copy of your existing preference files and then reset them to factory defaults. Creating a backup before this procedure is always recommended as it is impossible to recover these files after deletion. Note that deleting MicroStation’s temp files will not cause any additional side effects in MicroStation.

Resetting MicroStation user preference files and temporary files is a common troubleshooting step to resolve GUI issues as well as other technical issues with MicroStation. 
Here are some known GUI issues that corrupted UPF and/or temp files can cause:
- References dialog will not appear
- Cannot import text styles (file browsing dialog does not appear)
- Cannot import dimension styles (file browsing dialog does not appear)
- Missing raster manager

Steps to Accomplish

It is imperative that you close all open instances of MicroStation, when required by the procedure, in order for them to work. Before taking the steps below to re-create a clean user preference file, please consider the information in this blog:

Think you have a problem caused by a UPF, not so fast?

To re-create a new clean user preferences file (reset to factory defaults):

1. Open MicroStation with any file and open MicroStation’s Key-in panel (Utilities->Key-In)

2. Type the following string in MicroStation’s key-in panel and press enter: 

    $ % explorer $(_USTN_HOMEPREFS)

    This will open your user preferences folder within Windows Explorer 

3. Close MicroStation but keep the windows explorer window open.

4. MOVE (not just copy) the whole content of this folder - including all subfolders - into some other safe folder for backup.

5. Restart MicroStation and check if the issue still occurs.

In order to delete MicroStation’s temp files:

1. Open MicroStation with any file and open MicroStation’s Key-in panel (Utilities->key-in)

2. Type the following string in MicroStation’s key-in panel and press enter: 

    $ % explorer $(MS_TMP)    

    This will open your MicroStation’s temp folder in windows explorer.

3. Close MicroStation but keep the temp folder window open.

4. Delete all files in the temp folder.

5. Restart MicroStation and check if the issue still occurs.

See Also

Restore MicroStation to Factory defaults

Think you have a problem caused by a UPF, not so fast?

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