How to Export Firefox Bookmarks

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If you’re like me, you have at least a couple of browsers loaded on your desktop – Opera, Chrome and probably Firefox, my browser of choice.

I’ve written a lot of posts about Firefox because it’s totally customizable through the use of the thousands of addons available and because the basic Firefox interface is just so darned simple to use.

I have thousands of sites bookmarked on my Firefox browser – bookmarks that I’d like to also export to the other browsers I use, or to a thumbdrive or memory stick that I can take with me to access favorites from a remote site. As with all online functions, Firefox makes it easy to bookmark and easy to export your bookmarks to anything from a spreadsheet to another browser.

Now, over the years, I’ve got lots of folders loaded with lots of bookmarks. Problem is, they’re only available through the Firefox browser, right?

Luckily Firefox makes it simple to export that long list of favorite sites to other browsers or external storage devices with a few clicks. The programmers at Mozilla has delivered the utility I need to get basic tasks done quickly.


Exporting Firefox Bookmarks

There are a couple of ways to export Firefox bookmarks depending on where you want to export them to.

To export from Firefox to a portable storage device like a memory stick:

1. Open Firefox. Click on the Bookmark Manger tab on the bookmark toolbar.

2. A drop-down menu appears asking what you want to manage. Scroll to the bottom of the drop-down to Export.

3. A window opens. Click on Browse and locate the memory stick or thumb drive. It’ll usually show up as E: lexar or F: Memorex. In other words, the drive will have a letter after C:, your hard drive, and you’ll see a short description of exactly what you’ve plugged in to a USB port on your computer.

4. Then, select the portable drive to which you want to copy your favorites. Firefox does the heavy lifting. No formatting required.

And, what’s even cooler, with all of your bookmarks stored on a flash drive or some other portable storage device, you can still access all of your favorites from another computer – even one that doesn’t have Firefox loaded on it.

5. To find your Firefox bookmarks on that thumb drive, locate the file named bookmarks.html and click on it. All of your Firefox bookmarks will appear in the file hierarchy you created while using Firefox to browse and bookmark sites.

Exporting Firefox bookmarks to another browser is just as easy – maybe even easier.

1. Open the browser to which you want to export your bookmarks. To keep things simple, let’s say you want to export those thousands of bookmarks to Chrome. Open Chrome.

2. Minimize Chrome so it appears on your icon tray as open.

3. Next, insert your thumb drive or memory stick into the appropriate port – a USB port for the thumb drive, the memory stick port for a memory stick.

4. Browse to find the bookmarks.html folder on the portable memory device where you’ve stored your bookmarks. (See above.)

5. Open Chrome and shrink it so you can still see the Chrome browser interface.

6. Now, simply drag and drop the bookmarks.html file to any space on the open Chrome browser.

7. If you don’t want to save your bookmarks to a portable data storage device first, NP. Simply open your Firefox Profile Directory. The profile directory stores your bookmarks, your personal preferences and settings, themes, add-ons, extensions and other customized features that you’ve added to or disabled from Firefox.

Access your Firefox Profile Directory by opening the Firefox folder that appears as part of the list of Programs when you click on the My Computer icon on your desktop.

8. Open the Firefox Profile Directory.

9. Scroll to find the Bookmarks folder.

10. Now, simply drag and drop that Bookmarks folder anywhere on the open Chrome window.

Firefox will automatically reconfigure your bookmarks to the protocols of Chrome or any other browser, enabling you to export your Firefox bookmarks to Chrome, Safari, IE or any other browser.

One final note: I highly recommend storing your Firefox favorites on a thumb drive or memory stick for a couple of reasons. First, you can take your favorites with you wherever you go and simply plug in that drive into any other system using any other browser for instant access to your favorite, bookmarked sites or blogs.

Second, it’s taken years to collect bookmarked data – the important sites you visit routinely. It’s not data you ever want to have to recreate. So, storing these bookmarks regularly to a portable storage device provides another layer of protection from losing critical data.

I sleep better knowing my favorites are right there on my keychain.

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