How to Import & Export OrcaSlicer Profiles: 2026 Backup Guide

I migrated OrcaSlicer to a new MacBook last month and almost lost six months of filament profile tuning. The profiles weren’t where I expected them, the bundle import threw an error on first try, and the migration guide I found online still referenced the pre-2.0 .orca_preset extension that current builds don’t even use anymore. Here’s what actually works in OrcaSlicer 2.3.2, written by someone who’s done this both the easy way and the hard way.

This guide covers three workflows: the official preset bundle export and import (the cleanest path for most people), single preset sharing for when a friend just wants your tuned PETG profile, and the filesystem copy fallback for when the UI bundle workflow misbehaves. I’ll also cover the inheritance trap that makes “imported” profiles silently vanish, the cross-slicer migration story (spoiler: PrusaSlicer .ini import is not natively supported), and a backup strategy that has actually saved my bacon during a Windows reinstall. If you’re brand new and haven’t gotten through a first print yet, I’d start with my OrcaSlicer beginners first print guide before worrying about backups, but if you’ve already invested time tuning settings, this is the article to read before the next slicer update.

Table of contents

• What a “profile” actually is in OrcaSlicer
• Where OrcaSlicer stores profiles on your computer
• Workflow A: Export your profiles as a preset bundle
• Workflow B: Export a single profile to share with one person
• Workflow C: Manual filesystem backup (the fallback)
• Importing on a new computer
• Importing a community profile (and the inheritance trap)
• Migrating from Bambu Studio, PrusaSlicer, and Cura
• Why profiles disappear after updates, and how to recover them
• A backup strategy that actually works
• FAQ

What a “profile” actually is in OrcaSlicer

Before you can back something up, it helps to know what you’re backing up. I lost two hours on my first migration because I assumed “my profile” was one file. It isn’t. OrcaSlicer splits settings into three preset types, and your real “configuration” is the combination of all three.

There’s a fourth conceptual layer the wiki calls “printer model” (for example “Bambu Lab X1 Carbon” before you pick the 0.4 nozzle variant), but end users rarely see this directly because the setup wizard picks a variant for you and creates the linked machine preset automatically. If you want a deeper dive into how the printer side works, the add a custom printer guide covers that piece in detail.

The thing that trips people up: every user filament preset usually inherits from a system parent like “Generic PLA” or “Bambu PLA Basic.” Only the diffs are saved in your user JSON. If the parent disappears (because of a slicer update or a missing printer on the destination machine), the child appears to vanish from the dropdown even though the JSON file is still sitting on disk. I’ll come back to this in the inheritance trap section, because it’s the single biggest reason “I imported my profiles but they don’t show up” threads exist on GitHub.

Where OrcaSlicer stores profiles on your computer

I’ll save you the AppData scavenger hunt I went on. Here are the paths verified against 2.3.2 builds on each platform.

A few quick notes from doing this on every OS at least once. On Windows, AppData is hidden by default, so paste the path into File Explorer’s address bar instead of trying to browse to it. %APPDATA% resolves to C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\ if you want to know where you actually are. On macOS, the Library folder is also hidden, so hold Option, click the Go menu in Finder, and Library appears in the list. On Linux, nothing’s hidden but the dot prefix on .config means you need to enable “Show hidden files” in your file manager.

The Flatpak path is the one that has shifted recently. Older Flatpak builds used io.github.softfever.OrcaSlicer, and the application ID changed to com.orcaslicer.OrcaSlicer in 2.3.2. If your folder isn’t where I said it should be, check both IDs.

Inside the user/default/ folder you’ll find three subfolders that matter and a handful of loose files:

user/default/
  machine/      <-- your printer JSONs
  filament/     <-- your filament JSONs
  process/      <-- your process JSONs
  OrcaSlicer.conf  (general preferences, not part of the bundle)
  OrcaSlicer.log
  cache/

Note that the folder is called machine even though the UI calls it “Printer.” That’s a holdover from the Bambu Studio fork and it has confused me more than once when I was poking around at 1am. The three preset subfolders are the ones that actually matter for a backup. The OrcaSlicer.conf file holds preferences like window layout and your default startup behaviour, and it is not included in any bundle export. I’ll come back to that.

There’s also a portable mode worth knowing about. If a folder literally named data_dir sits next to orca-slicer.exe, OrcaSlicer uses that as the config root instead of AppData. You can also force a custom location with --datadir "C:\path\to\folder" on a shortcut. I keep my workshop PC and laptop syncing a portable folder through OneDrive so they always share the same profiles. More on that in the strategy section.

Workflow A: Export your profiles as a preset bundle

This is the workflow you’ll use 80% of the time and the one I recommend for almost everyone. Bundles preserve the inheritance links between presets, the printer associations, and the JSON structure that OrcaSlicer expects on import. The filesystem copy works too, but the bundle is what the slicer is designed around.

To start, open OrcaSlicer and go to File → Export → Export Preset Bundle… (note the ellipsis, that’s the exact menu wording in 2.3.2). A dialog opens with five radio button options. Here’s what each one actually does in plain English, because the dialog itself is terse:

1. Printer config bundle (.orca_printer): the entire setup for one or more printers, including any custom filaments and process presets linked to that machine. This is the “give me everything for this printer” option. If you tuned an A1 with three filaments and two process presets, exporting an .orca_printer packages all of it.
2. Filament bundle (.orca_filament): custom filaments only, but with their printer connections preserved. Pick this when you’ve tuned one spool across multiple printers and want to share that filament without dragging the whole machine config along.
3. Printer presets (.zip): raw JSON files for custom printer configs, zipped. No bundle wrapper, just the files. Useful if you want to inspect or edit the JSON before someone else imports it.
4. Filament presets (.zip): raw JSON filament configs, zipped. Same idea as above.
5. Process presets (.zip): raw JSON process configs, zipped.

For 90% of backup use cases, you want option 1 (.orca_printer) per printer you’ve tuned. It packages everything related to that machine in one file. The plain .zip options are for when you specifically need to share raw JSON or do something programmatic.

Important callout: the .orca_preset extension you’ll see in older articles and forum posts is a pre-2.0 legacy format. Current OrcaSlicer builds use .orca_printer and .orca_filament. If a tutorial tells you to look for .orca_preset files, it’s outdated and the menu paths may also have shifted. Trust 2.3.2 for current advice.

Picking what to include in the bundle

Once you’ve selected an export type, OrcaSlicer shows a checklist of every matching custom preset on your system. Tick the ones you want to include. This is more important than it sounds, because the default selection isn’t always “everything.”

If you’re doing a full backup, tick every checkbox. If you’re sharing a specific setup with one person, just tick the printer they need. I always do a full backup before any slicer update, then a targeted export when I’m sending something to a friend.

Click OK once your selection is set. OrcaSlicer asks where to save the bundle, then writes a single file and shows a confirmation toast. The bundle is usually small, a few hundred KB at most, so cloud storage versioning is essentially free.

Saving the bundle

The save dialog is your operating system’s native one, so it looks like every other “save as” dialog you’ve ever used. Pick a sensible name (I use PrinterName_YYYY-MM-DD.orca_printer) and a sensible location.

My rule: bundles go straight into a cloud-synced folder (OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud Drive, doesn’t matter which). The file is tiny, the versioning is free, and you’ll thank yourself the first time a drive fails. I’ll dig deeper into this in the strategy section.

Workflow B: Export a single profile to share with one person

Sometimes you don’t need a bundle. Your friend asks for your Hyper PETG profile tuned for a Bambu A1, or you want to upload a single filament tune to a community thread. The bundle dialog is overkill for that.

From the active preset dropdown in the filament, process, or printer tab, there’s a context option (in 2.3.2 it shows as a small “Export to file” entry in the dropdown header next to the preset name) that writes a single .json file. Right click or open the dropdown’s overflow menu, pick the export option, and save the JSON where you want.

The recipient imports it via File → Import → Import Configs, points at the .json file, and OrcaSlicer drops it into their user/default/filament/ (or wherever) folder. If there’s a name collision, they get an overwrite prompt.

One catch: the JSON file only contains the diffs from the parent system preset. If your friend doesn’t have the matching parent on their machine (because they’ve never added that printer in the setup wizard), the import will appear to succeed but the preset will be invisible in the dropdown. This is the inheritance trap again, and I’ll go deeper on it below. The fix is for them to add the printer first, then re-import.

If you’re sharing filament profiles specifically, my filament settings deep dive covers what’s in those JSONs and why pressure advance values don’t transfer cleanly between hardware. Worth a read if you’re sending profiles to someone with a different printer.

Workflow C: Manual filesystem backup (the fallback)

Here’s where I have to be honest. The bundle workflow is the cleanest path, but it does fail. GitHub Discussion #12127 and Issue #1739 both document real users where the bundle imports but presets do not appear in the dropdown, usually because of missing parent system presets or a different OS on the destination machine. When that happens, the filesystem copy is your safety net.

Steps:

1. Close OrcaSlicer fully on the source machine. On Windows, check the system tray icon and exit it from there too. If the slicer is running it will write changes back to the folder and you’ll end up with a half-saved state.
2. Copy the entire user/default/ folder to a USB stick, OneDrive, Dropbox, or external drive. You can copy the whole OrcaSlicer/ folder above it if you want preferences too, but the safest minimum is just user/default/.
3. On the destination machine, install OrcaSlicer 2.3.2 (same version on both sides). Launch it once, run through the setup wizard, then close the slicer fully.
4. Paste the copied default folder into the same path on the new machine, overwriting the empty default that the fresh install created.
5. Launch OrcaSlicer and verify your presets show up.

Honest caveats. This is more fragile than the bundle for a few reasons. Cross-OS copies (Windows to macOS, say) often partially fail because while the JSON files themselves are portable, embedded paths and file permissions don’t always survive. On macOS you may need to chmod -R u+rw on the copied folder to get the slicer to read it cleanly. Username differences inside the same OS aren’t a problem (the path shape is identical), but copying the entire AppData\Roaming\OrcaSlicer\ across user accounts can break absolute paths stored in OrcaSlicer.conf. Sticking to just the user/default/ subfolder avoids that trap. If you’re standing up a fresh install, my setup wizard walkthrough shows you what to click through before you paste the folder.

The filesystem copy is also the right move when restoring from a dead hard drive. Recover user/default/ from your backup, install OrcaSlicer fresh, run the wizard once, paste the folder. That’s the recovery flow documented in GitHub Discussion #5033, and I’ve done it twice on dead drives. Worked both times.

Importing on a new computer

The single most important rule for cross-machine imports: install OrcaSlicer and run the setup wizard before importing your bundle. The wizard adds the system parent presets that your custom filaments inherit from. If you import a bundle into a fresh OrcaSlicer with no printers added yet, the bundle technically lands on disk but the presets stay hidden because their parents don’t exist.

Walking through the full sequence:

1. Install OrcaSlicer 2.3.2 on the new machine (same version as the source, ideally).
2. Launch it. The setup wizard runs automatically on first start. Pick the same printer (or printers) you had on the source machine. This populates the system presets and the printer model definitions.
3. Close the wizard, but leave OrcaSlicer open.
4. Go to File → Import → Import Configs.
5. Browse to your .orca_printer, .orca_filament, or .zip bundle. Pick it.
6. OrcaSlicer asks about conflicts if any preset names already exist. Pick Overwrite if you want your tuned versions to win, Cancel otherwise. There’s no merge option.
7. Restart OrcaSlicer fully (close it, reopen). The Polymaker wiki recommends this and so do multiple GitHub threads, because the preset index doesn’t always rebuild cleanly mid-session.
8. Verify your custom presets are in the dropdowns.

If presets are still missing after a restart, that’s almost always the inheritance trap. The bundle landed, but a parent system preset wasn’t added by the wizard. The fix is to open the setup wizard again (Preferences or the Printers tab) and tick the missing printer variant, then restart the slicer one more time.

Importing a community profile (and the inheritance trap)

If you’re importing a profile someone else made (a MakerWorld download, a JSON from a forum thread, a Sovol release for a specific printer), the three accepted paths are:

1. File → Import → Import Configs, pick the .json, .orca_printer, .orca_filament, or .zip.
2. Drag and drop the file onto the OrcaSlicer window. Community reports say this works for config files (not just 3MF and STL), but it’s less reliable than the menu route. If drag and drop doesn’t do anything, use the menu.
3. Manual copy into the right user folder, then restart. Drop the filament JSON into user/default/filament/, the printer JSON into user/default/machine/, the process JSON into user/default/process/. Restart OrcaSlicer.

And here’s the inheritance trap I keep mentioning. A community filament JSON usually has an "inherits" field pointing at a system parent like "Bambu PLA Basic @BBL X1C 0.4 nozzle". If you’ve never added the X1C as a printer in your slicer, that parent doesn’t exist on disk. The import “succeeds” (no error message), but the preset is hidden from the dropdown because its parent is missing. Confusing.

The fix is always the same: add the printer first via the setup wizard or the add custom printer flow, then re-import the JSON. The preset will appear once its parent exists.

This is also why I prefer bundles over raw JSON shares. A .orca_printer bundle packages the printer definition alongside the filaments and processes, so the inheritance chain stays intact when the recipient imports it.

Migrating from Bambu Studio, PrusaSlicer, and Cura

This is the section where I have to break some bad news depending on which slicer you’re coming from.

Bambu Studio to OrcaSlicer

This one’s clean. OrcaSlicer is a Bambu Studio fork, so the JSON schemas are compatible. The simplest path is to log into your Bambu account in OrcaSlicer (Account menu, top right) and let cloud sync pull the presets across.

The catch: Bambu’s cloud sync has eaten user filament profiles for several people. There’s a known Bambu forum thread documenting filament presets vanishing after a Bambu Studio session syncs and overwrites Orca’s local copies. If your tuned filaments matter, export a bundle from Bambu Studio first using its equivalent File → Export flow, then import the bundle in OrcaSlicer. Cloud sync is convenient but not a backup.

PrusaSlicer or SuperSlicer to OrcaSlicer

Not natively supported. OrcaSlicer cannot read PrusaSlicer .ini bundles directly, and GitHub Issue #1648 confirms this is by design (the issue was closed as not planned). I want to be clear on that because I had the wrong information in an earlier draft.

The community workaround is theophile/SuperSlicer_to_Orca_scripts, a Python tool that converts PrusaSlicer or SuperSlicer .ini files into OrcaSlicer-compatible JSON and drops them into your user folder. It works, but it’s not officially supported and you should expect to validate the converted profiles manually. One known quirk from the script’s README: PrusaSlicer allows filament_max_volumetric_speed = 0, OrcaSlicer doesn’t, and the script substitutes a sane default. Worth checking after conversion.

If you’ve only got a handful of profiles, honestly, just rebuild them. You’ll get a better OrcaSlicer-native result than fighting with a converter on every minor schema mismatch.

Cura to OrcaSlicer

No migration path at all. Cura uses .curaprofile, an INI-like format with a completely different schema (different concepts of mesh modifiers, supports, infill). There’s no tool, official or community, that converts Cura profiles to OrcaSlicer.

The honest advice: read off your Cura settings manually, rebuild as a new OrcaSlicer process preset, and re-tune from there. The PLA settings guide and PETG settings guide have starter values for the common materials, and the OrcaSlicer calibration workflow (temperature tower, flow, pressure advance) will get you to a good place faster than trying to translate Cura values verbatim. They use different abstractions, so a copy-paste isn’t going to land cleanly.

Why profiles disappear after updates, and how to recover them

“OrcaSlicer ate my profiles after the update” is the single most common pain point on the issue tracker. GitHub Issues #4459, #4679, #8982, and #12452 are all the same shape: user updates, profiles vanish from the dropdown, user panics.

Nine times out of ten, the profiles are still on disk. Open the user/default/filament/ folder (or machine/ or process/) and the JSON files are still there, untouched. What broke is the inheritance link. The system parent preset got renamed or removed in the update, and your child preset has no parent to inherit from, so OrcaSlicer hides it.

Recovery steps:

1. Close OrcaSlicer.
2. Browse to %APPDATA%\OrcaSlicer\user\default\filament\ (or the equivalent on your OS). Confirm the JSONs are there.
3. Open one of the missing-from-UI JSONs in a text editor. Look at the "inherits" field.
4. Open %APPDATA%\OrcaSlicer\system\ and search for a system preset matching the inherits string. If it’s not there, the parent moved.
5. Either rename the inherits field to the new parent name (risky, requires knowing the new name), or re-add the printer via the setup wizard and let OrcaSlicer regenerate the system parents.
6. Launch OrcaSlicer. Your profiles should reappear.

If none of that works, restore the user/default/ folder from your most recent backup. This is exactly the scenario the bundle export was designed for. My troubleshooting master guide has more on debugging slicer state when things get weird, but for missing profiles specifically, the inheritance check is usually the answer.

I also want to flag one detail from Issue #12223: user preset JSONs only store the diff from their parent, not the full settings. That undocumented format is why you can’t just open a child JSON and read all the values out. If you need to inspect the effective settings, you have to do it through the OrcaSlicer UI or by manually merging the diff with the system parent.

A backup strategy that actually works

Knowing how to export is half the battle. The other half is doing it on a schedule that catches problems before they bite.

My strategy, refined over two years and one drive failure:

1. Bundle export before every slicer update. Even point releases (2.3.1 to 2.3.2) have wiped profiles for some users. Five minutes of clicking File → Export → Export Preset Bundle before you hit “Update” is the cheapest insurance you’ll ever buy.
2. Bundle export before linking a Bambu account. Cloud sync has overwritten user filaments for several people. Export first, link second.
3. Keep the bundle in cloud storage. OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, all fine. The file is tiny (a few hundred KB), so versioned cloud copies are essentially free. I keep a rolling six months of dated bundles.
4. Re-bundle every 3 to 6 months, or after any major calibration session, whichever comes first.
5. Disable Auto Sync User Presets in Preferences if you don’t want Bambu cloud to touch your local copies. The exact toggle wording in 2.3.2 is “Auto sync user presets” (check your Preferences dialog, the placement has shifted between versions).
6. Use portable mode for multi-machine workflows. Drop a data_dir folder next to orca-slicer.exe, or pass --datadir "C:\OneDrive\OrcaConfig" on your shortcut. Your workshop PC and laptop now share the same profiles automatically. The UI tour guide has more on where to find Preferences if you haven’t poked around there yet.

Quick comparison of the three workflows for choosing which one to lean on:

And here’s what’s actually inside a bundle versus what gets left behind, so you know whether you need a secondary backup for preferences:

If your pain point is “I lost my printer network credentials after a reinstall,” the bundle won’t save you. You’d need to manually back up OrcaSlicer.conf as well. GitHub Issue #3012 was the feature request for a “back up everything” button, and it was closed as not planned, so don’t hold your breath for an all-in-one solution.

FAQ

What’s the difference between .orca_printer and .orca_preset?

.orca_preset is the pre-2.0 legacy extension. Current OrcaSlicer builds (2.x and up) use .orca_printer for printer bundles and .orca_filament for filament bundles. If a tutorial mentions .orca_preset, it’s outdated and the menu paths may have changed too.

Can I import a PrusaSlicer .ini file directly?

No. OrcaSlicer doesn’t natively read PrusaSlicer .ini bundles, and that’s confirmed as a design decision in GitHub Issue #1648. Use the community theophile/SuperSlicer_to_Orca_scripts converter, or rebuild the profile manually.

Why don’t my imported profiles show up in the dropdown?

Almost always the inheritance trap. The user preset JSON references a system parent that doesn’t exist on your machine. Add the matching printer via the setup wizard, restart OrcaSlicer, and the imported preset should appear.

Can I move profiles from Windows to macOS by copying the folder?

Yes, but it’s fragile. Copy only user/default/ (not the entire OrcaSlicer folder), install the same OrcaSlicer version on macOS, run the setup wizard once, then paste the folder into ~/Library/Application Support/OrcaSlicer/user/. You may need to chmod -R u+rw on the copied folder for the slicer to read it cleanly.

How big is a typical bundle file?

A few hundred KB. Even a full backup of every printer, filament, and process you’ve ever tuned is rarely more than 1 MB. Cloud storage versioning is essentially free for these.

Will OrcaSlicer back up my preferences along with my profiles?

No. The bundle covers profiles only. Preferences (window layout, network printer credentials, default behaviours) live in OrcaSlicer.conf and are not included in any bundle export. Copy that file separately if you need it.

What’s the safest way to migrate to a new computer?

Bundle export from the old machine, install OrcaSlicer 2.3.2 on the new machine (same version on both sides), run the setup wizard and add your printer first, then import the bundle. The wizard step is critical because it populates the system parent presets your bundle’s user profiles inherit from.

Do I need to back up before a minor update like 2.3.1 to 2.3.2?

Yes. Multiple “lost profiles after point release” issues exist on the OrcaSlicer tracker. The inheritance chain can break even on small version jumps. Two minutes of bundle export before the update is cheap insurance.

Wrapping up

The short version of everything above: use File → Export → Export Preset Bundle to save a .orca_printer file, store it in cloud storage, and do this before every update. If the UI import fails on the destination side, fall back to a filesystem copy of user/default/. If profiles vanish after an update, they’re almost always still on disk and the fix is fixing the inheritance link, not panicking.

OrcaSlicer 2.3.2 made the bundle workflow more reliable than it used to be, but it’s still not foolproof. Treat your bundle as a working backup, version it in cloud storage, and re-export every few months. The reader who lost six months of tuning to a Windows reinstall is the one who didn’t have a bundle in their OneDrive. Don’t be that reader.

If you’re early in the OrcaSlicer journey and haven’t dialled in your first prints yet, start with the beginners first print guide and come back here once you’ve got profiles worth backing up. For everyone else: go export a bundle right now, before you finish reading this paragraph.

Related OrcaSlicer guides

• OrcaSlicer Settings Master Guide: Every Setting Explained (2026)
• OrcaSlicer Settings Hierarchy: Printer, Filament, Process
• OrcaSlicer for Elegoo Neptune 4 / Pro / Plus / Max: 2026 Setup Guide
• OrcaSlicer for Anycubic Kobra 2 / Neo / Plus / Max: Setup and Best Settings (2026)
• SimplyPrint vs Obico vs OctoEverywhere: OrcaSlicer 2026