Transferring data to a new profile - Firefox

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Revision as of 17:12, 2 July 2008 by Alice Wyman (talk | contribs) (→‎Copy data to the new profile: Firefox 3: added more info about copying profile data to a Fx3 profile, including removal of JSON files when replacing places.sqlite with bookmarks.html)
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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

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 transfer them. 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.

If you were not having any problems with the old profile, you can delete the entire contents of the new profile folder and then copy everything you wish to transfer at once, into the new profile folder.

Firefox 3

Starting in Firefox 3, certain profile data is stored in a new file format. For example, Firefox 3 uses cookies.sqlite instead of cookies.txt and it uses places.sqlite for both bookmarks and browsing history, instead of bookmarks.html and history.dat. When you open Firefox 3 with a profile that contains files from a previous Firefox version, Firefox 3 will "convert" the profile by using the information in the older files to create new files in the new format, but only if the profile does not already contain the Firefox 3 versions of those files. After the profile contents have been converted to Firefox 3 format, the older files will still remain in the profile folder but they will no longer be used by Firefox 3.

Important: If you are copying data from a profile that was used in older Firefox version to a new profile, make sure to delete the corresponding files in the new profile folder (e.g., delete the .sqlite files from a Firefox 3 profile) so that Firefox can create a file in the new format using the data in the copied file. In the case of bookmarks, you also need to delete (or rename) any bookmarks-(date).json files from the bookmarkbackups folder when you copy bookmarks.html to the profile and delete places.sqlite; otherwise, Firefox 3 will use a JSON file to restore the missing bookmarks instead of converting the bookmarks.html file you copied.

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:

Site specific settings (e.g. Page Zoom):

  • content-prefs.sqlite (Firefox 3 only).

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