MetaTrader Templates and Profiles: What Each One Stores

One trader rebuilt a chart last night and lost indicator settings that took an hour to tune. Another opened the terminal this morning to a different set of charts than the one left open on Friday. Those are two problems, and MetaTrader keeps a separate file for each.

What follows sets out what each file records, where the platform puts it, the reserved names that change behaviour without being asked, and two consequences of profiles most explanations leave out.

What a Template Carries and What It Leaves Behind

In the vendor documentation a template is the saved state of one chart window, recorded so it can be put onto other charts.

What it saves is visual and analytical: chart type and colouring, the colour scheme, the scale, whether the OHLC line is displayed, every technical and custom indicator with the settings it was tuned to, drawn objects, day separators, and any Expert Advisor attached to the chart together with its inputs. What a migration carries to a virtual platform is a different list again, and it is decided by the platform rather than by a saved file.

Absent from that list are the market and the period, and that is not an oversight to be worked around. MetaQuotes states the mechanism plainly: when a template is applied, the stored settings are applied to the instrument and the timeframe of the chart receiving them. The chart keeps its own identity and the template supplies everything else.

That sentence explains a behaviour many guides report as an exception. One set of indicators can be spread across a dozen unrelated symbols and periods and every window looks identical, because the part that differs is the part the file never held.

It also explains a frustration blamed on the file. Saving a template while working on a fifteen minute gold chart does not create a gold template; it creates a look, and that look lands on whatever chart receives it.

Why a Profile Is a Workspace and Not a Chart Setting

A profile answers a different question. Not how does this chart look, but what was on the screen.

Three things go into it: the charts open at the instant it is saved, the position and size of each window, and the template each chart wears. Reopen it and every window returns to the place it occupied.

One property surprises anyone who expects a save button to be the only way something is recorded. Changes to open chart windows are written into the current profile automatically, with no confirmation and no reserve copy held while you experiment.

So a profile is only a snapshot if you deliberately branch it. Saving the current arrangement under a new name creates a copy, and that copy becomes the active one. An arrangement survives because you named it, not because you left it alone.

The name of the current profile sits in the status bar, and its charts are listed in the Window menu.

Where MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 Keep the Files

Both platforms write templates as TPL files and keep profiles as directories rather than single documents. The paths differ, and confusing them is the usual reason a copied file never appears in the menu.

Reach those folders from inside the terminal, not through the operating system, because an installation can keep its working data somewhere other than the folder it was installed into. It is the same route used when custom indicators in MetaTrader are placed by hand.

The Reserved Names That Change Behaviour on Their Own

Some template names are not ordinary names. The platform watches for them and applies the matching file without being told.

MetaTrader 5 reserves three, each with the TPL extension: default, applied to every chart you create; tester, used for the chart that displays testing results; and debug, which appears when debugging of an MQL5 program starts from the editor. MetaTrader 4 reserves the default name the same way, creating it during installation.

Two consequences follow, and neither is obvious from the menu.

Save a working setup over the default name and every new chart opens carrying it, including charts opened in a hurry for an unrelated symbol. Whether that helps or irritates depends on how heavy it is.

The second is a deletion rule: MetaTrader 4 will not remove the default template, nor delete the profile currently in use or the one named default. A default is changed by overwriting it.

Naming the tester template deliberately is worth a moment for anyone who tests often, since it decides what every result chart looks like. What such a chart can show is a separate question from what it proves.

A Profile Can Be Tied to an Account Number

This rule turns profiles from a convenience into a safeguard, and it appears in the documentation for both platforms. A profile named identically to a trading account number belongs to that account, and opens by itself when the terminal switches to it. If no profile carries that number, nothing is imposed and the current workspace stays where it was.

For anyone holding more than one login, that makes a demo desk and a live desk visibly different, so the answer to which account is this arrives from the screen rather than a menu. It applies equally to two accounts on different servers, where symbol names and the clock may not match either.

The setup is ordinary: arrange the charts for that account, save the profile under the account number exactly as the terminal shows it, and connect.

The failure mode is equally plain, because a mistyped number never matches and the profile then behaves like any other. Check the number against the terminal rather than against memory, and apply the same care to the server clock when two accounts sit in different time zones.

Switching a Profile Can Start an Expert Advisor

A profile records the templates its charts were wearing, and a template can carry an attached Expert Advisor with its inputs. Follow that chain to the end and loading a profile can put automated programs back on charts and running.

MetaQuotes does not leave this implicit. The documentation states that chart templates holding running Expert Advisors are saved inside profiles, and that the platform therefore provides a setting to disable them automatically when the profile changes.

That setting exists because the alternative is a live account executing a strategy nobody consciously started. Find it once and decide deliberately, rather than reading about it afterwards in the Journal and Experts logs.

Where several charts in one profile each carry a program, a single switch starts all of them at once, which is the situation described under running Expert Advisors on one account.

None of this argues against saving working automation into a profile. It argues for treating a workspace switch as a trading action rather than a visual one.

Moving Settings Between Two Terminals

Two routes exist. The manual one is older: a TPL file is an ordinary file, so copying it into the templates folder of the second installation puts it in the menu the next time the platform looks.

That works between two installations of the same platform, between a desktop and a laptop, and between two brokers.

Across platform generations that route is less dependable, and the reason is worth stating rather than treating as a rule of thumb. A template names the indicators it expects to find. Where an installation has no indicator under that name, nothing loads in its place, and the chart opens with less on it than the file described rather than raising an error.

The second route is the vendor one. MetaQuotes provides Algo Forge, integrated into the editor, for sharing and synchronising templates and profiles between platforms through an MQL5 community account, reachable from any machine that signs in. For anyone working on more than one computer, that removes the copying step rather than automating it.

Either way the check afterwards is the same. Apply the template and confirm every expected indicator is present with its own settings, since a missing custom indicator is silent. Where the platform difference is the underlying question, it is set out in MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 compared.

Choosing Between the Two by What You Want Preserved

The choice becomes simple once asked in the right form. What exactly are you trying to keep?

A look, a set of indicators, or an Expert Advisor and its tuned inputs is a template, and it travels to any symbol and any period. An arrangement, a group of markets watched together, or a screen you want back tomorrow exactly as you left it tonight is a profile.

Most working setups use both, because the two are layered rather than alternative.

Two situations are worth naming as the wrong tool. Neither file preserves trades, orders or account history, so neither is a backup of anything financial; that record lives in the account statement. And neither transfers a purchased indicator to a machine without it, because a template refers to the indicator rather than containing it.

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