Where does the HP Smart application save the printer settings backups?

[QwazyWabbitWOS]

Where does HP Smart save printer settings backup file?

I am referring to the Tools tab, Backup and Restore dialog. I enter a password and click save and the application says it has successfully saved the backup but when I attempt to RESTORE the saved file it requires you to enter the password and BROWSE for the saved backup. The location it opens in the browse dialog is "This PC" > "Documents" but there is no backup file in that folder. The application doesn't ask for a file name or folder to save, why does it need to browse on restore?

One expects the application would SAVE and RESTORE to/from the same folder.

[JamesDM1]

What browser are you using?

I have the same issue with the Backup  File option when accessing an OfficeJet Pro 740 EWS page in Google Chrome in that it doesn't tell me where it has saved the file (and I can't find a 'usrdata.enc' file if I search the entire hard disk) or give me an option to choose the location to save it.

However if I access the printer EWS page with Internet Explorer I get the usual file download options popup at the bottom of the browser window so I can choose the save the file to a suitable location on my PC as with any other file download.

[QwazyWabbitWOS · Accepted solution]

I wasn't using the browser at all. I was using the HP Smart app from the desktop in Windows 10.

But your question about browsers prompted me to look into this again and the answer is the HP Smart app doesn't save the backup file at all. At least not in any findable way. If it's using usrdata.enc, it's not saving it anywhere on the system's C drive. The SAVE dialog goes through the motions and says file save completed, no popup warning or dialogs at all, no opportunity to select a location. The RESTORE dialog asks for the location but it never tells the user where the SAVE put it.

The HP Smart app never saves the backup!

Using Edge, the browser accepts the file and pops up the usual Open, Save, Cancel dialog. Proceeding with Save, the file is saved in the customary place (Downloads) on my system, disclosing the file name as usrdata.enc in the process.

ANSWER: Don't use the HP Smart application at all. Use a browser capable of doing ordinary file saves.

Google Crome browser saves the name of the file in a status bar at the bottom of the window. 

[JamesDM1]

In the version of the HP Smart that I have on Windows 10, the Backup & Restore function is in the Embedded Web Server (EWS) section. Even though the pages in this section show up inside the Smart App, I think they may be rendered using a Web Browser. You can see the same pages that are in the EWS section of HP Smart by entering the printer's IP address directly into a web browser address bar.

Whichever browser  the HP Smart App uses will therefore determine if you can save the backup file or not. I guess HP Smart uses whichever browser is registered as the default for opening web pages on the system that it is installed on.

I have HP Smart on 2 PC's - on the one where Edge is the default browser the backup file can be saved from the HP Smart App, and on the one with Chrome as the default browser the backup file can't be saved from the HP Smart App - but it works fine when I open the printer's EWS via it's IP address in IE or Edge.