Bookmarks

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Revision as of 11:37, 26 December 2007 by Alice Wyman (talk | contribs) (→‎Stored bookmarks and backups: moved Firefox 3 information to a note at the bottom of the section and mentioned bookmarks.postplaces.html)
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Bookmarks (also called Favorites in some browsers) let you save a link to a page in the browser interface so you can easily revisit pages without having to remember the url, or search for them again.

In Mozilla browsers like Firefox, Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey, you can save your bookmarks to, or view them from, the Bookmarks menu, the Bookmarks Toolbar or the Sidebar. You can organize or manage your bookmarks using the Bookmarks Manager, accessible from the Bookmarks menu. You can also import another set of bookmarks or export your current bookmarks to a backup location, using the "Import" and "Export" features of the Firefox or Mozilla Suite Bookmarks Manager.

Stored bookmarks and backups

Mozilla-based browsers store your bookmarks in the file "bookmarks.html" located in the profile folder. (There is also a file called "bookmarks.html" in the program folder, but this one is a template, and does not hold your bookmarks.). In Firefox, there is a file called "bookmarks.bak" (intended to protect against certain file system bugs [1]) and, by default, Firefox versions 1.5 and higher also create five daily backup files called "bookmarks-(date).html" in the bookmarkbackups folder. Mozilla Suite and SeaMonkey don't create automatic bookmark backups but you may find backups created by third party applications, for example, "bookmarks.html.sbsd.bak" or "bookmarks.html_deadlink_bak" [2] (also applies to Firefox).

You can use your operating system’s file and folder search feature to locate your stored bookmarks, or you can open the profile folder and look through its contents. To find all bookmarks files anywhere on your computer, search for bookmarks* (be sure to include the asterisk, with no space). Important: On Windows systems, you need to enable viewing and searching hidden files and folders. Read the information here for details, including a shortcut method for opening the profile folder.


Note: Starting in Firefox 3 (not yet released) bookmarks will be stored in the Firefox profile folder in the file places.sqlite. In a converted profile, the bookmarks.html content will be migrated to the places.sqlite file, after which the bookmarks.html file will no longer be used. Firefox 3 bookmark backups will be still be stored as bookmarks*.html files, e.g., in bookmarks.postplaces.html and in the bookmarks-(date).html backups.

Opening the bookmarks file

When you locate the "bookmarks.html" file (or any other bookmarks file ending in ".htm" or .html") you can double-click the file to open it with the program associated with HTML files, normally your default browser. When you open a bookmarks file in the browser, the individual bookmarks will appear as a list of clickable links. You can also open the "bookmarks.html" file or any other bookmark backup file, (even a bookmarks file that ends in ".bak") ) from within Firefox or Mozilla Suite by clicking "File -> Open File" from the browser menu, then navigating to the folder that contains the bookmarks file and opening it.

For example, if you wish to review the contents of a dated bookmarks file from a Firefox bookmarkbackups folder, select "File -> Open File" from the Firefox menu. When the file picker appears, navigate to the Firefox profile folder's "bookmarkbackups" folder and select the "bookmarks-(date).html" file you wish to open. Windows 2000/XP/Vista users: You can easily open the Firefox bookmarkbackups folder by entering %APPDATA% for the file name and clicking "Open", then double-clicking each of these folders, as they appear: "Mozilla -> Firefox -> Profiles -> xxxxxxxx.default (where xxxxxxx is any sequence of numbers and characters) -> bookmarkbackups". You can then select one of the bookmarks-(date).html files and click "Open" to display the contents.

Sharing bookmarks

You can share the same bookmarks file among different Firefox Mozilla Suite or SeaMonkey profiles by setting the preference browser.bookmarks.file to point to the file you wish to use.

See also