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Only 1/3rd of my bookmarks imported from IE. How do I move the rest?

  • 8 replies
  • 9 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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I have lots of bookmarks in hierarchical folders sometimes 3 deep. Only some of them, and the first level of folders, were imported. How do I get them all? Manually? [Pathetic groan]

I spent about 40 minutes reading up on bookmarks on the Help site. No luck. I tried importing them again and received some more, again with folders at one hierarchy. Some of the bookmarks are also in the wrong place.

I have lots of bookmarks in hierarchical folders sometimes 3 deep. Only some of them, and the first level of folders, were imported. How do I get them all? Manually? [Pathetic groan] I spent about 40 minutes reading up on bookmarks on the Help site. No luck. I tried importing them again and received some more, again with folders at one hierarchy. Some of the bookmarks are also in the wrong place.

Chosen solution

3rd opinion here. It seems that the Import from IE function during the installation of Firefox (and from the File > Import menu item) has trouble with the newer versions of IE (like 7, 8, & 9) and complex or multi-tiered folders setups that a user might have in IE. Exporting your IE favorites in bookmarks.htm format and then importing that file into Firefox seems to work a lot better - nothing seems to get lost. Plus, you don't end up with a folder labeled from Internet Explorer that is separate from the bookmarks you will be saving in Firefox in the future - all those bookmarks from IE should end up in the main Bookmarks Menu folder.

If you are a new Firefox user and don't yet have any bookmarks that you saved in Firefox, beyond those that were imported from IE, I think you should use the Firefox SafeMode to delete all your Bookmarks in Firefox and start from scratch.
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode
Use the SafeMode option to Delete all bookmarks except for backups and then use Make changes and Restart.
Then export your Favorites from IE and import that file into Firefox like this.

In IE:
File > Import/Export - Export to HTML file

then in Firefox:
Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks -> Import & Backup - Import HTML... = From HTML file

Doing it in this manner should make it so that you don't have a lot of duplicate bookmarks to get rid of, except for that you purposely save as duplicates when you were using IE.

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You may want to use IE's export feature. You can export from IE to an HTML file, and then import that into Firefox.

IE: Import or export favorites in Internet Explorer

Firefox: Importing Bookmarks from an HTML File | How to | Firefox Help

Did that get the rest of them? (Apologies in advance for duplicates!)

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If you need to remove duplicates then look at:

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Chosen Solution

3rd opinion here. It seems that the Import from IE function during the installation of Firefox (and from the File > Import menu item) has trouble with the newer versions of IE (like 7, 8, & 9) and complex or multi-tiered folders setups that a user might have in IE. Exporting your IE favorites in bookmarks.htm format and then importing that file into Firefox seems to work a lot better - nothing seems to get lost. Plus, you don't end up with a folder labeled from Internet Explorer that is separate from the bookmarks you will be saving in Firefox in the future - all those bookmarks from IE should end up in the main Bookmarks Menu folder.

If you are a new Firefox user and don't yet have any bookmarks that you saved in Firefox, beyond those that were imported from IE, I think you should use the Firefox SafeMode to delete all your Bookmarks in Firefox and start from scratch.
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode
Use the SafeMode option to Delete all bookmarks except for backups and then use Make changes and Restart.
Then export your Favorites from IE and import that file into Firefox like this.

In IE:
File > Import/Export - Export to HTML file

then in Firefox:
Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks -> Import & Backup - Import HTML... = From HTML file

Doing it in this manner should make it so that you don't have a lot of duplicate bookmarks to get rid of, except for that you purposely save as duplicates when you were using IE.

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I started moving one and two, now I've almost finished a complete manual reorganization of my bookmarks. If I only knew then what I know now ...

Thank you for the help. I did learn!

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VeraLenora -- You should probably pick either jscher200's answer or the-edmeister's answer and mark it as "solved it!" so that your question doesn't continue to appear on the "unsolved questions" list -- since it appears that the suggestion to export from IE and then import to FF worked.

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how can I import it manually?

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Hi mikiffff, did you try importing using:

Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks > Import and Backup > Import Data from Another Browser

If you do not have the text "Import and Backup", look for the icon of the yellow star with circular green arrows in the corner.

If that didn't work, try the steps in my post above: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/835144#answer-199693

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The CheckPlaces extension has been removed and is no longer available, so there doesn't seem to be an extension available to check for and resolve duplicate bookmarks.