Moving those favorites
I like the way Internet Explorer stores shortcuts to Web pages as Favorites. They're easy to create and don't take much time to change. You can click your right mouse button on any Favorite in the list that pops open when you click the "Favorites" menu and copy, rename or delete it, to give just one example of how simple this can be. Equally simple is the way Internet Explorer "exports" Favorites. "Export," in the way it's used here, is a word that means sending Favorites to a location they're not normally stored in. By using the export function, you can send your Favorites to your sister-in-law by e-mail or you can put them on a floppy disk to take to another computer.
The Process
- Within Internet Explorer click File and select "Import and Export...".
- On the first page of the Import and Export Wizard, click Next.
- Click "Export Favorites" and click Next.
- To back up all favorites, leave the Favorites folder highlighted, and click Next. If you want to back up only certain folders in your favorites, you can select them.
- Under "Export to a file or address," select the destination to which you wish to save your favorites and click Next. This can be on a hard disk on your computer, on a network drive, or on a removable disk. Even with a lot of favorites, this file is usually small enough to put on a floppy disk.
- Click Finish. You should get a dialog box that says "Successfully exported favorites" when the file copy is finished.
Now you are set
Now if you need to import the favorites back into IE on another machine, or on the same one after you've reformatted and reinstalled the OS, just open IE, open the Import and Export wizard again, and this time, select "Import Favorites" and follow the steps. By default, the file name when you save your favorites is bookmark.htm. You can navigate to this file where you saved it and open it in your browser. You'll see links to all your favorites, categorized by folders.