Windchill shell command-line utilities are provided for a site administrator to export preference information to an XML load file, and to import previously exported preference information. These utilities can be useful in many ways, including exporting preference settings from a test system and importing those preference settings into a production system. Exported preference information from different Windchill systems could also be run through a comparison tool to compare the different system environments. The preference information exported includes the preference categories, preference clients, preference definitions, links between preference definitions and preference clients, links between preference definitions and preference categories, and preference instances at different levels (site, organization, context, or user).