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You won't let me export bookmarks to html you say I'm not the administrator but I am

  • 7 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by jims1914

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I am interested in dual booting to Linux. However I need to export my bookmarks. I've always been able to export my bookmarks to an html but now you say I Can't because I'm not the administrator?! I am the only user and run as administrator. This doesn't make sense.

I am interested in dual booting to Linux. However I need to export my bookmarks. I've always been able to export my bookmarks to an html but now you say I Can't because I'm not the administrator?! I am the only user and run as administrator. This doesn't make sense.

Chosen solution

Can't you export the bookmarks to an HTML file on the desktop?


You can make Firefox create an automatic HTML backup (bookmarks.html) when you exit Firefox if you set the browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML pref to true on the about:config page.

That backup is created by default in the profile folder as bookmarks.html, but you can set the file name and path via the browser.bookmarks.file pref on the about:config page.

The browser.bookmarks.file pref doesn't exist by default and you need to create a new String pref with the name browser.bookmarks.file and set the value to the full path of the backup bookmarks file.

Note: an HTML backup doesn't preserve tags and annotations, so you lose those if you need to import the HTML backup.

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Do you have this problem on Windows or on Linux?

You may not have read/write access to the the location of this folder.

Did you check the permissions/ownership of the files and folders?

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I have this problem on Windows and I'd hate to see that a single bookmark could prevent me from transferring all of them from Windows 7/Firefox to Ubuntu Cinnamon/Firefox. I also wouldn't know where to check up on the permissions. Worse come to worse I have a Html file from two weeks ago when I needed to do a fresh reinstall as my hard drive was dying.

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It didn't solve the problem. Shouldn't I have the read/write permissions on a computer running Windows 7 where I am the administrator and am using free open source software? What or whom would prevent me - the NSA perhaps?

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Hello,

Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode, which disables most add-ons.

(If you're not using it, switch to the Default theme.)

  • You can open Firefox 4.0+ in Safe Mode by holding the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
  • Or open the Help menu and click on the Restart with Add-ons Disabled... menu item while Firefox is running.

Once you get the pop-up, just select "'Start in Safe Mode"

If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, and you need to figure out which one. Please follow the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article for that.

To exit the Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.

When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help other users who have the same problem.

Thank you.

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I tried it all. I did safe mode, I used the default theme; I cannot use hardware acceleration due to my legacy ddr2 graphics card. I would hate to have to put everything in default, but it appears it is my only choice at this point. And I still have no guarantee that I could then send my bookmarks to a html folder.

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Chosen Solution

Can't you export the bookmarks to an HTML file on the desktop?


You can make Firefox create an automatic HTML backup (bookmarks.html) when you exit Firefox if you set the browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML pref to true on the about:config page.

That backup is created by default in the profile folder as bookmarks.html, but you can set the file name and path via the browser.bookmarks.file pref on the about:config page.

The browser.bookmarks.file pref doesn't exist by default and you need to create a new String pref with the name browser.bookmarks.file and set the value to the full path of the backup bookmarks file.

Note: an HTML backup doesn't preserve tags and annotations, so you lose those if you need to import the HTML backup.

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I had to go into about:config and set the bookmarks to send to the Mozilla profile. Then I copied and pasted it to my documents and went back and set the browser bookmarks auto Export to false as it was. Thank you for the links that led me to understand how to do that.