Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

How do I backup my Internet Explorer favorites in Windows?

Hi Dave, I am relatively new to computers and hope you can help. I am getting better at using the computer but I do have problems. This problem really gets me upset every time it happens: my computer crashes a lot and I have to reinstall windows thus loosing everything on my computer. I would like to know if there is a simple way that I can save my IE favorites folder on a disk so I won't lose this information? Also how to put them back when I get the computer up and running again? Any help you can be will be greatly appreciated as this is a very frustrating thing for me.

Dave's Answer:

Well, first of all, let me say that continual computer crashes are not normal and you should have an expert take a look at your system. You may have a virus or something that is causing these crashes. If you're running Windows ME, that could be part of the problem, too. I'd recommend that you ensure you're running Windows XP with SP2 installed (see my articles about SP2 for more information).

As for saving your favorites, there are several options. Depending on your version of Microsoft Internet Explorer, one might work where another one won't. For the newer versions, you can export them directly from within MSIE:

Select File -> Import and Export. This will start the "Import and Export" wizard.
Select Export and the click on "next."
Select Favorites and click on "next."
In the next window you can accept the default Save Directory or choose a new one. I suggest you select "Desktop" so you can easily find the file again. Click on "next."
Finally, click on "finish" and your Favorites will be saved to disk.

The default file name is "bookmark.htm": simply copy this file to a floppy disk or even email it to yourself (or both).

To Import your Favorites into a newly created version of Microsoft Internet Explorer post-crash (though I still don't understand why your computer crashes so much!) simply run the wizard again. This time select Import and click on "next." Browse to the saved copy of "bookmark.htm" and the wizard will replace your existing bookmarks (which are just the defaults) with the saved copy.

If you're running an older version of IE (whatever you're reinstalling from your installation CD), you can use a free utility program to do the same thing as above. One that I have found to be good is Bookmark Wizard.

If you're feeling like experimenting, another option is to save your bookmarks somewhere online. There are tons of online bookmark services -- just Google "online bookmark manager". With the online option, your bookmarks aren't stored on your computer, so if it crashes you won't lose them. You do have to visit the site of your online bookmarks to get to them, but it is convenient in that you can access them from any computer with Internet access.

Here are a few of the most popular, though I can't say which are better because I don't use any of them myself:

Pluck Web Edition
Hyperlinkomatic
My Yahoo (sign up for a My Yahoo account and add the bookmarks feature to your page)
del.icio.us
Spurl

The last two listed are what are called "social bookmarks", so they are public, not private. Public bookmarks are nice if you want to see what other people who have similar interests are viewing -- it's a great way to find new sites that might specifically interest you. If you're concerned about privacy, however, you should probably not choose a social bookmarking system, even though there's no personally identifiable information saved on their servers.

Tommy Martin also has a nice online tutorial on how to import and export Favorites from within Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Finally, IE's help system actually has some very useful information on how to export bookmarks too, where they note: "Exported favorites are saved as regular HTML files, so either Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator can import them. You can export a selected folder in your Favorites list, or all of your favorites. The exported favorites file is fairly small, so if you want to share the favorite items with other people, you can copy it to a floppy disk or folder on a network, or attach it to an e-mail message."

Lots of folk helped with this particular question, including Kim Smith, Chris Thomas, James Foster, John Carlin, Tony Derricott, Sahil Tandon, Mya Leigh and Larry Royal.

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon

Categorized: Windows Help (Article 3967)
Tagged:
Previous: PC to Sony PSP: How do I download music?
Next: Can I get Microsoft Office XP Updates Offline?

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

Your info on how to back up favorites was very helpful and easy. Do you have an easy way to backup email addresses?

Posted by: john Shgelman at December 3, 2006 9:12 AM

I don't really understand what you're asking, John. You have email addresses in Internet Explorer?

Posted by: Dave Taylor at December 4, 2006 12:40 PM

Hi Dave,

If my computer has already crashed and what left is a HDD with ton of files and directories.
Where does IE store favorite data file ? and can I copy necessary files from that folder to a new IE folder in new HDD ?

Thanks,
Norasate.

Posted by: Norasate at March 11, 2007 10:47 AM

Oh yeah~! so nice! i can move my firefox favourite to ie7 now! so nice!

Posted by: onilik22 at March 18, 2007 2:06 AM

Hey - I've been running into the same laptop crashing thing (I know why though - it's 5 years old and I've been beating the stuffing out of it, asking it to do things it wasn't designed to do). But anyway, I will be getting a new laptop and wanted to know the same thing - can I copy my bookmarks over...The guy who will be configuring my new system said the only way to do so was to purchase a $30 cable and transfer them over that way. I thought that was a little strange and searched the question on the internet, just to be sure....Just wanted to say THANKS for posting such a careful response to the posters question; I'm grateful for info.

Cheers,
lisa

Posted by: lisa at March 29, 2007 7:02 AM

Question: How do I transfer files (such as My Pictures on AOL, my Address Book, etc)from my computer to CDs or DVDs? I do not know how to even start doing this. Any help will be appreciated.

Posted by: Ted Pfrimmer at March 29, 2007 9:17 AM

Hi Dave: Thanks for posting the section telling all of us how to save our favorites, in such an easy way, most all of us can understand and follow the directions. It worked perfectly, Thanks again, Larry

Posted by: larry at March 30, 2007 10:13 AM

Hi,

I had a virus that was cleaned off my computer, and now when I go on the web, the top of my page does not show "File" and the other normal words anymore, so I can not export my favorites as I used to do. How can I get a normal page again? Thanks.

Posted by: Ginny at September 2, 2007 6:26 PM

thanks but ididnot find file export in IE7 ???

Posted by: atia at October 12, 2007 5:15 PM

Wow, what a fast, easy to use answer to my question on saving my favorites. Even IE's help files couldn't answer the question, much less with such easy to follow directions. Thanks.

Posted by: Roger at December 6, 2007 9:42 PM

Thanks for your hint at moving bookmarks. I had been searching for a while and getting more and more annoyed! I put your webpage on my moved favorites!

Posted by: andy at January 9, 2008 11:14 AM

WOW,
Good to know that..........

Posted by: Avinash B at February 7, 2008 11:05 PM

Very helpful. Thanks very much Dave.

Posted by: Mark Eichenlaub at April 17, 2008 5:27 PM

I have accumalated 200 plus additions to my favorites on my work computer. Is there any way to copy it and place it on my own personal Google home page. This would allow me access any computer, and log into my personal google page and be able to access the favorites list that I mentioned above.

Posted by: Rick Swanson at May 9, 2008 12:24 PM

I have just enabled a feature on my site :
http://www.pro.org.uk/servlets/BookMarks
This allows you to import all of your IE and Firefox favorites into the site, simply create an account then you will see import features in the bookmarks section, copy and paste content of bookmarks.htm [ie] bookmarks.html [Firefox] into the form boxes submit, you will then find it stored in the category they appeared available for use on any other PC online once you have logged in.
[ it also takes a small snap shot of the site to show you what it looks like ]
Hope its of some use to someone out there!

Posted by: Masterv at May 22, 2008 1:52 PM

dave, I'm a senior with some computor knowledge but I need to put all my husbands favorites in a folder. I have vista microsoft. I would appreciate you help.

Posted by: darlene at September 30, 2008 11:37 AM

Hi there,
I was wondering if anyone could help me out -
I recently made the mistake of deleting the file in which my favorites were stored. I was unable to access my favorites, add new favorites, or anything untill Iwent into the recycling bin and restored it.
Once I restored my favorites the link to the folder in which favorites are kept (mydocuments/myname/favorites) seemed to be fine. although my old favorites were gone, it looked like id be able to add new ones.
The link on IE however, will not allow me to add new favorites. Whenever I click "add to favorites" the link I add will go to the folder under my documents, but it doesnt come up on IE. I'm really frustrated with this, and any advice would be great.
Thanks :)

Posted by: Cassie at December 26, 2008 9:23 AM

Thanks for the info on backing up favorits on IE. Your instructions made it so easy.

Now, can you tell me how to back up messages from outlook express to move to a new computer? I got the address book backed up to my removable hard drive but can't figure out out to export the messages.

Thanks!

Posted by: Kathy at April 15, 2009 9:49 PM

Blessings and thanks for people like you, so helpful and such easy explanations for non-nerds like me. Much appreciated.

Posted by: libra at April 23, 2009 9:39 AM

I thank you 10 times over for the info on My Yahoo and using bookmarks. As I share cpu with spouse, we had way too many websites saved in favorites. I created a Yahoo acct & removed all of my stuff off of favorites & moved over to my yahoo bookmarks. Then deleted it from the Favorites. Folks, this is a godsend. Thank you, connie

Posted by: CONNIE at May 9, 2009 10:34 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!