Good that this wishlist item exists, I already voted.
In the past, a Windows update made my FSX not to start anymore, re-install required. And what if I want to replace my PC? These are the things which can happen and I do not want to imagine assigning in MSFS all the key bindings and adjusting all the settings once again…
They either need to implement the export/restore function or make an official statement if and how the settings are stored in the cloud. I hope for many more votes!
I want to add:
Don’t we also need a backup function for the other settings like general, graphics etc.? I notice that I invest substantial time to figure out all the settings which fit best to my way of using the sim and also to my hardware like graphics card, VR lense etc.
Should this request go into a separate topic?
As long as there are cases that cannot be fixed without deleting even the cloud data as a recovery method, I think this is an essential feature to reduce the burden.
Would be great if we could have the ability to export to file the controller profile, and also the ability to import that file.
Why, many times I’ve lost USB connection to a controller and on re-connection (power), MSFS has lost the controller setup and takes sometime to reset up.
Yes, even some sensible way to just export a list of settings - I have a different controller profile for each plane i fly so losing the lot would really be a pain.
Will this feature ever be available? I’d be great to be able to share aircraft controller profiles and I am at a loss as to why this option hasn’t been added to the sim.
Surely it can’t be that difficult to add this functionality?
Surprised no official statement about this, since the request started in Aug 2020 !
Ahhh this is a pain.
Had my TM Warhog throttle disconnected (usb) from the system for a day, when i plugged it back in MSFS seen it okay, but all my profile for that hardware were gone !!!
Come on Microsoft / Asobo, sort this out.
Remove the .pln, and then it becomes a .bat file (Plain text, so you can read / edit it) so you can do what you what with edit, and edit it to do exactly what you want.
This .bat file, when run, will do a backup & then start MSFS.
You WILL need to customize it according to is you have the MS-Store or Steam version of MSFS.
Once again its all plain text, nothing hidden, BUT – play with it at your own risk.
In an Ideal world, a suitable back/restore system would be seamlessly incorporated into MSFS, and not need some random external program to try to do the job… but the world is not ideal - so here is a “possible” solution.
Someone mentioned they would gladly pay for an add-on that allows backing up the control files and another mentioned something that requires a great deal of work on the frontend, but he never mentioned the program.
SPAD.nEXT fits the bill. I am working through the learning curve as we speak. It provides a lot more power to your controls and will switch accordingly to the aircraft selected.
By a lot more power, consider this:
A short press of the flaps lever will raise or lower the flaps one notch at a time. A long press will raise or lower the flaps fully. Additionally, you could have it trigger other actions like fully lowering the flaps will activate the landing lights or/and lower the gear - not that you’ll actually have it do this, but it could.
Again, the curve is steep (at least to me).
I have collected a lot of hardware but only now getting around to setting up my controller configs and it seems like a lot of work, so I was going to ask how we “backup” those - sounds like this is not possible yet? 
Going back a few years we’ve had issues where users lose their Cloud Profiles or they become corrupt, normally corrupt.
In this I’m mainly talking about Controller Profiles.
The amount of time and effort put into creating and maintaining profiles, per aircraft for controllers with no default MSFS config (Like Virpil) is hours.
Then to start MSFS and find that “one” of those configurations, lets say stick, has reverted to just having “Default”, which is empty. You contact support and they tell you the only way to fix is by deleting your Cloud Profile as it’s got corrupt.
You now have two options, do not delete and rebuilt the stick configs and hope it does not corrupt again, or delete it all, that is all configurations, hours, adventures etc - everything.
I sometime (year) back tried the rebuild, not delete, but it failed again not long after that time and had to do a delete.
In the last few day, I’m now on my third corrupt Cloud Profile, meaning I’ve lose some of the configurations, and had to Delete the Whole Profile this time to resolve and lose everything, again, then spend hours rebuilding the configs.
Microsoft / Asobo…
PLEASE, give use the means to create configurations and then “EXPORT” them so we can keep a safe copy, so if we have to delete the Cloud Profile, we can then save loads of time/effort and IMPORT the controller configurations.
I know this will not be a big voting topic, unless the issue has effected you, but Microsoft/Asobo, this can’t be that hard to do ?
I don’t know if this could help you
count me in. creating individual profiles per aircraft for my thrustmaster Airbus quadrant and throttle is a mess and I am sure other went through this before and would love to share their profiles so I just need to import them. would love to see that function. in the meantime, are profiles found somewhere so I can manually copy/paste them?
We need simple things like backup specific files. Oh my god.
What gets me, is I lost Everything, hr’s flight history, adventures, the lot as the cloud profile for controller got corrupt, and only way to fix cloud profile is to delete it all, which is all of the above plus controller profiles.
Hope this gets picked up by the team, maybe small, but big issue for end users when it happens, or at least the current fix is.
Add me to this list.
Twice now the cloud has corrupted my settings primarily due to lost communication completely server side. But even if it isn’t server side fault; just about every other software has a way to save user settings. Spent hour upon hour troubleshooting only to find the issue is cloud side. It seems like I spend more time fixing the sim than flying with no fault of my own.
It boggles the imagination that Asobo/MS haven’t even considered this given the many server connection issues (forums are just full of them). I’ll be attending FlightSimExpo in June and, trust me, I’ll make sure that Asobo/MS get an ear full from me about what should be a no-brainer feature.
Agreed. The same just happened to me, I lost everything (settings, controls, accessibility options, logbook etc…) after the Authentication/Insert Disc message on startup. I had very little time to fly this month and this basically prevented me from flying since I don’t have hours to dedicate for re-setting everything.
EDIT: SOLUTION UPDATE
After a few days of headache, I’ve finally got back my previous settings after the “insert disk/unable to verify license” error.
step by step guide:
P.S. In case you still have default control options, manually set your custom settings selecting them on the MSFS control page.
Voting for this not because I’ve ever lost my control profiles, but because being able to share them would be awesome and being able to cleanly export the profiles would be the first step.
I think a good profile manager (like DCS) would be very helpful for backing up and restoring locally (not on the cloud). Just imagine how many simmers in the MSFS history set up their controllers individually—say, reinvent the wheel. anyway, it’s far more than customizing your controls.