I have a new Win 7 machine, new FF 3.6.3, old hard drive, now external, can't get bookmarks from it to new installation
I got a new computer, Win 7, 64 bit OS, bought an external drive housing where my old hard drive now exists as an external drive. I downloaded a new copy of Firefox, 3.6.3, and would like to get my bookmarks from the old hard drive into the new one but have not found a way to do so. The organize bookmarks/import thing didn't work. I can SEE all of them on the other drive but can't find a way to import them to my new Firefox bookmarks without doing it one by one and there are a couple hundred. I'd like to be able to get them all and have them merge into identically named folders, only a few of which I've created so far in the new machine.
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Did you try doing so through Bookmarks>Organise Bookmarks>Import and Backup>Import HTML?
Is the file in HTML format? How did you backup your bookmarks?
genej101, you can move your bookmarks (and if you want, all your Firefox settings) from the old drive to the new one by following the instructions in this article: Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles. Basically, you have to copy the contents of your old Profile folder to the new one. In case you need to know what Profiles are, please read this article: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data.
No the old bookmarks aren't in an html file the only one I see on the old drive is dated 7/2008 is empty. I did try to boot the old Firefox, which only brought up the "new" bookmarks. I did look at backing up the information and I do find two profiles one on each drive but don't know how to merge the old one into the new one.
I wonder if uninstalling Firefox on the new machine, then reinstalling it might do the trick, because when I installed the new version I did not yet have the external hard drive set up, a new install would cause Firefox to go find the bookmarks on the external hard drive I think. Other programs know to look there as well as on C:
Resolved it. Did do the uninstall, then went to the external drive and found the most recent backup there and got my complete set of bookmarks back. Whew. Thanks for all the advice!
Ok, let me try to explain step-by-step:
- The bookmarks are not in HTML file. This is OK. Firefox does not store the bookmarks in HTML format.
- Even if you boot the old Firefox, it will show the new bookmarks. This is also OK. You can't really do much about that.
- Uninstalling and re-installing Firefox will not solve your problem. Firefox will not see the bookmarks in the external hard drive. Please do not try this approach.
Now, to make things as simple as possible, let's try to bring all of your old bookmarks and settings into the new computer.
- Make sure that you have closed Firefox completely. This can be done by selecting File menu and then clicking on Exit.
- You said you were able to locate the Profile folder on the external hard drive, right? Just to confirm, the name of this folder is something like xxxxxxxx.default (for example, my Profile folder is named 9qnmvkea.default. Yours will be something similar).
- Double click on this folder to open it.
- Select the Edit menu and click on Select All. Select the Edit menu again and then click on Copy.
- Now, open Firefox from your new computer and follow the instructions given in this article to locate your new Profile folder: Locate your profile folder. Again, this folder would be named like xxxxxxxx.default
- Once this is done, again close Firefox by selecting File menu and then clicking on Exit.
- Double click on your new Profile folder to open it.
- Select the Edit menu and click on Paste. Windows will ask you if you want to replace existing files with same name. Select replace. Wait till all the files have been replaced.
- Open Firefox again from the new computer. Hopefully, you should see your old bookmarks now.