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Import firefox bookmarks from different installation

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  • 2 have this problem
  • 47 views
  • Last reply by CalvinV

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I had an installation of Firefox with a complete set of bookmarks in drive C. I just replace drive C with a new SSD drive and the previous drive C is now drive F. Now, neither my new nor my old installations of firefox can access the previous firefpx bookmarks. I haven't set up a firefox sync account before so my bookmarks were not saved somewhere online either. So, how do I access the local bookmarks from my previous installation of firefox ? Other than becoming drive F instead of drive C, I believe all the local files on my drive remain the same and nothing were deleted. Thank you.

I had an installation of Firefox with a complete set of bookmarks in drive C. I just replace drive C with a new SSD drive and the previous drive C is now drive F. Now, neither my new nor my old installations of firefox can access the previous firefpx bookmarks. I haven't set up a firefox sync account before so my bookmarks were not saved somewhere online either. So, how do I access the local bookmarks from my previous installation of firefox ? Other than becoming drive F instead of drive C, I believe all the local files on my drive remain the same and nothing were deleted. Thank you.

Chosen solution

You can copy the profile from one drive to the other.

You may need these as references:

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Chosen Solution

You can copy the profile from one drive to the other.

You may need these as references:

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Long process.

But before you do . May want to uninstall and reinstall on another disk as a SSD is not the place for Firefox. Due to write and rewrite the life of your SSD is cut down with over 35gig of data being written to the SSD per day.

If understood you correctly should change this then can help you with the bookmarks.

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

Modified by Shadow110

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Thanks for the tip regarding installing Firefox on SSD. However, when I reinstalled firefox, the installer realized that I had firefox installed previously and only gave the option of clicking the "reinstall" button which installed firefox back to drive C. Is there a way to tell the installer to provide installation destination option ?

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It does if you do it this way : uninstall Firefox. Then Delete the Mozilla Firefox Folders in C:\Program Files and C:\Program Files(x86) Then restart system. Then run Windows Disk Cleanup. (Note: This should be Pinned and run Weekly, If never done below expect 10's of gig's) Then run it again and click the button that says Cleanup System Files. Note: your Firefox Profile is saved. But you should make a back up before you do : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/export-firefox-bookmarks-to-backup-or-transfer

Reinstall with Current Release Firefox 57.0.2 with a Full Version Installer https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/

So would want to finish dealing with the profile first : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data

I would think that Firefox will still install the Profile to C: but if can do all the backup and export and then Cut the profile out and delete the folder also. As this is where the data gets written to. So hoping it creates New Profile on the New Drive you designate.

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

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The Firefox installation drive isn't that important.

What matters is on what drive the Firefox profile folder is located and that is by default on the Windows system drive (C drive).

Best is to use the Profile Manager to create a new profile folder and use the "Choose Folder" button and browse to the previously used profile folder that is now the F drive.

See "Profile was moved or renamed": "Create a new profile using the Profile Manager"

Note that you should never use "Choose Folder" to specify a folder that already contains files that do not belong to Firefox (i.e. only use "Choose Folder" to recover an orphaned profile that isn't listed in the Profile Manager)

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Problem solved. Thanks for your help. It's a little more harrying than necessary since the profile data on driver F is under the hidden APPDATA directory and cannot be displayed using the windows directory browser. I happened to try Chrome (since firefox has to be closed during copying) and it does display the hidden directory so I can copy the files over.

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Did you move the Firefox profile folder to the SSD drive?

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I just created a new profile on a HD and use that instead of the default profile. That's a fairly simple process. The hardest part, after having all the instructions, is figuring out how to look at the files under the hidden APPDATA directory in drive F. Almost everything assumes drive C including the value of the variable %APPDATA%. Thank you very much for your help.