Now that you've made the switch to µTorrent, you're probably wondering if or how you could import all the torrent jobs you were running in your previous client. Rest assured that the process is a relatively simple one, and only requires a bit of patience, depending on how much data is being "imported" into µTorrent -- the larger and more numerous the torrent contents being imported, the longer it will take, because it all means that the data integrity checking will take longer as well.

Removing Extra Extensions

There is a simple matter to tend to first before proceeding with the import, and that has to do with a specific feature in some other clients. Some other clients append a special extension to incomplete files to indicate that they are incomplete, and µTorrent (if the relevant option is enabled) is no exception. Because of this extension, µTorrent might have trouble recognizing the torrent contents, and will ignore them instead. To fix it, all you have to do is remove the special extension from any incomplete file. If there are many files, this can quickly become a boring and tedious task. Luckily, a simple batch script can be used to rename all files with the unwanted extension:

@for /r %%i in (*.XT!) do @move "%%~fi" "%%~dpni"

Copy and paste the above line of code to a new text file, then change the XT! to the extension you wish to remove. BitComet, for example, appends a bc! extension to the end of incomplete files, so you would replace the XT! in the script with bc!. Now, save the text as a batch file (rename.bat, for example), and all you have to do is move the batch file to the directory containing files you want to rename, and run the script, then repeat for any other directory containing files you want to remove the specified extension for. Note that the above script is recursive, so any files contained within any other directory in the same directory as the batch file will be renamed as well if they have the specified extension.

Importing Torrent Jobs

With extra extensions out of the way, the rest of the process is smooth sailing in that you'll likely get no errors. All you need to do is to open the .torrent file in µTorrent, and point it to the location that the torrent contents were already saved to while you were using your other BitTorrent client. µTorrent will automatically check the data integrity, and assuming everything went well, will resume where you left off previously. Realize that you must do this for each and every .torrent file you wish to import.

There is an alternative method for loading .torrent files that does not require manual user intervention, but it's best left for people with many torrent jobs to import. Additionally, there is one major prerequisite before this method can be used: all torrent contents you wish to import must be located in a common directory, not organized in any fashion, but simply located in that directory as if it were the directory you selected to download the torrent contents to. That aside, you can start setting the process up as follows:

  1. In the Directories preferences, tick the "Put new downloads in" checkbox, untick the "Always show dialog on manual add" checkbox, and select the path to the directory that all your torrent contents are located in. Make sure the "Don't start the download automatically" option is left unticked.
  2. Now create a new directory somewhere, then go to the auto-load torrents option and set it to point to that newly-created directory.
  3. After confirming the changes, move all the .torrent files you wish to load into the directory you just told µTorrent to automatically load .torrent files from, and µTorrent should do so, automatically starting and checking all the torrent contents.

If a torrent job is already completed, µTorrent will automatically place it in seeding mode. After everything is imported, feel free to revert the changes made to the µTorrent settings.

Changing .torrent Associations

Another thing you might want to do when switching to µTorrent is to unassociate .torrent files with your previous client, and have them open with µTorrent by default. If you plan on keeping the other client, and want µTorrent to open .torrent files by default, you should look in your previous client's options and find a way to have it not associate itself with .torrent files automatically, if it does so. In any case, all you have to do in µTorrent is associate it with .torrent files in the Preferences.