Saving Favorites & Bookmarks…

Before I begin with today’s topic, I want to remind TR Times readers of two excellent venues for finding help with your computer problems—the Computer Club, which meets on Mondays at 7:00 P.M in Citrus Center East, and the newly formed TR Macintosh Users Group that meets on Tuesdays at 7:00 P.M. in the Paul Ruth Place. Both groups begin with question and answer sessions and feature how-to presentations. They are also good places to connect with TR residents who can answer your individual computer questions.

Now for today’s topic: If you connect to the internet, odds are you visit certain web sites repeatedly. Whether you use Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari, these browser programs give you a way to make returning to your favorite sites easy — by saving Favorites if you use Internet Explorer or Bookmarks if you use Firefox or Safari. Favorites and Bookmarks, which are the same thing, are records of website addresses that can be accessed with a click of your mouse.

Your Favorites or Bookmarks list are embedded in your browser software, but what happens if you have a problem and need to reinstall the software? If you’ve had this experience, you know that your Favorites/Bookmarks are gone unless you had the foresight to save them. Outlined below are the steps you need to take to save your Favorites/Bookmarks in the three most popular browsers.


INTERNET EXPLORER (version 5.0 or later)

1. From the File menu choose Import and Export.
2. This starts the Import/Export Wizard. Click NEXT.
3. Select Favorites and click NEXT.
4. The next screen shows the location for saving the Favorites list. Accept the default, or choose another location and click NEXT.
5. Click FINISH.

To reinstall your Favorites, follow the same steps, choosing Import instead of Export.


MOZILLA FIREFOX — PC & MAC
(You should be using the most recent version of Firefox, which is v. 2.0.0.11 on both platforms.)

1. From the Firefox menu bar, click on the Bookmark menu and choose Organzize Bookmarks (in older versions of Firefox it is Manage Bookmarks).
2. A new window opens and the menu bar changes.
3. From the File menu select Export.
4. Choose a location to save your Bookmarks and click on the Save button.

To reinstall your Bookmarks follow step 1 and 2 above, then:

3. From the File menu select Import.
4. Click the button next to From File.
5. Choose the location of you Bookmark list and click the Open button.


SAFARI (for Macintosh)

1. From the File menu choose Export Bookmarks...
2. Choose a location for your Bookmark file and click the Save button.

To reinstall the Bookmark file:

1. From the File menu choose Import Bookmarks...
2. Find the location of your Bookmark file and click the Import button.


For safekeeping in case your hard drive fails, you should save a copy of your Favorites/Bookmark file to a flash drive, external hard drive or burn it to a CD. But then, you do have a complete backup your hard drive, don’t you? If not, I’ll cover backing up your computer in next week’s column.

Besides the OnMouseClick blog at onmouseclick.blogspot.com there are two more blogs you might want to checkout. The newly formed TR Macintosh Users Group has a blog featuring information about the group and some how-to’s for Macintosh Users. You can find the blog at trmug.blogspot.com. The other blog you might be interested in is my new photo blog. I plan to update it two or three times a week, with each post featuring a new photograph. You can visit my photo blog at lsqlensviews.blogspot.com.