Transferring data to a new profile - Firefox

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Revision as of 11:19, 5 June 2008 by Alice Wyman (talk | contribs) (→‎Suggested profile contents to transfer: placed files and folders in separate sections and removed headings for individual files)
Jump to navigationJump to search

This article explains how to selectively transfer Firefox user data and settings to a new Firefox profile and provides a list of suggested files. If you're using either Thunderbird or SeaMonkey, see Transferring data to a new profile - Thunderbird or Transferring data to a new profile.

Preparation

Back up your profiles

It's a good idea to first back up your profiles as a precaution. MozBackup is a popular way to do that if you use Windows.

Create a new profile

Installing Firefox and running it for the first time automatically creates a "default" Firefox profile. Additional profiles can be created using the Firefox Profile Manager. If you haven't yet created a new profile, completely close Firefox by choosing File -> Exit (or Quit) and then open the Profile Manager and follow the prompts to create the new profile, Make note of the name you give to the new profile so you can distinguish between the old and the new, then exit the Profile Manager (do not start Firefox with the new profile).

Copy data to the new profile

If you had problems with your old profile and haven't identified what set of files is causing your problem, it's recommended you copy files from your old profile folder to the new one in several steps, testing whether things are still working okay between steps.

It's recommended that you only copy data that would be a lot of work to recreate (such as bookmarks, passwords, and cookies) to the new profile. Extensions, themes, and preferences are a common cause of Firefox problems so you should re-install any extensions and themes and reconfigure your preference settings if you had problems with the old profile, instead of trying to migrate them.

Note that Firefox 3 uses a new file format for certain profile data (e.g., "cookies.sqlite" instead of cookies.txt) and will create files using data contained in files from older Firefox versions, if found. If you are copying profile data from a profile used with an older version of Firefox, make sure to delete any sqlite files in the new profile folder so that Firefox can create a file in the new format using the data in the copied file.

Suggested profile contents to transfer

The following files and folders are found in your Firefox profile folder. Note that, on Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Linux, you will need to show hidden files and folders to navigate to the profile folder or search for the files.

Files

Bookmarks and browsing history:

  • bookmarks.html (Firefox 2) - Bookmarks
  • history.dat (Firefox 2) - Browsing history of previously visited websites
  • places.sqlite (Firefox 3) - Bookmarks and browsing history. Note that Firefox 3 stores both bookmarks and browsing history in the places.sqlite file.

You can alternately use the import from file feature of the Bookmarks Manager to add the contents of any bookmarks file in HTML format to your current Firefox bookmarks.

Cookies:

Download actions for file types:

Form history:

  • formhistory.dat (Firefox 2) or formhistory.sqlite (Firefox 3) - Saved entries for web forms and the Search Bar.

Passwords: (Both of these files must be copied)

Permissions:

  • hostperm.1 (Firefox 2) or permissions.sqlite (Firefox 3) - Per-site preferences for allowing cookies, images, popups, and extension install permissions.

Preferences:

  • user.js (an optional file) and prefs.js - User preference settings. Not recommended to transfer if you had problems in your old profile. You may need to manually edit the paths in prefs.js to reflect the new profile location. If the new profile doesn't have the same extensions, you may have some unused preferences set by those extensions, but that usually doesn't harm anything.

Security certificate settings:

  • cert8.db

Session storage:

Spelling corrections:


Folders

  • extensions - Contains added themes and extensions. Not recommended to transfer if you had problems in your old profile. After copying this folder or its contents to the new profile, delete the "extensions.ini", "extensions.cache" and "extensions.rdf" files from the profile folder. These files will be regenerated when you start Firefox. Note that some extensions store data in additional files in the profile, usually at the top of the directory. You'll need to move them separately.
  • searchplugins - Contains additional search engines, if you've added any to Firefox.

See also

External links