Restoring PC Stickies

I use a program called “Stickies” to temporarily keep track of notes throughout the day (similar to the OS X program with the same name, but for Windows). It creates resizable, styleable post-it-note-esque boxes on my desktop that can be repositioned, deleted, or serve as reminders (visually, and with audible alarms). I restarted my machine a few days ago and was prompted to choose a file from which to restore my stickies settings. My heart sunk as the backup restoration failed – but I knew somehow I’d get them back, and I did. Here’s how:

  1. Right-click on the stickies icon in the taskbar hidden icons area
  2. Select “About Stickies v7.0beta” – yours may say something different
  3. A window will open. At the bottom, click the ellipsis (…) to go to the data directory folder
  4. Right-click again on the stickies icon in the hidden icons area and select “Exit” to quit the program
  5. Go to the data directory folder you just opened and duplicate the last file that contains usable data (you can usually tell if the file size is larger, or open it with a code editor and search for significant text)
  6. Duplicate the backup file by copying and pasting it (ctrl+c, then ctrl+v)
  7. Find the file stickies.ini in the data directory and rename it stickies.ini.old
  8. Rename the file you copied stickies.ini
  9. Restart your Stickies program, and you should be back in business

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