Moving Favorites to new Laptop

[julian abram]

I was trying to move my favorites from my old laptop to a new one I purchased today. Both units have Windows 10. I've Googled this and seem to get lots of suggested steps but none seem to work for my setup. Any suggestions or links to help with this?

[Bill Dufour]

Normal way is to save them to a thumbdrive then physically move them over. Then save the thumbdrive for a reboot in case you lose everything in a hard drive crash.

[Sam Force]

Copy the urls and put in a word or similar document then attach to email

[Mike Henderson]

I'm only familiar with Chrome but I assume other browsers work the same way. If you have an account on Chrome, it will move your favorites to Chrome on any computer - providing you sign on to Chrome on that computer. It will synchronize your favorites on all of your computers that you use Chrome on. So if you have a travel computer and a desktop, and add a favorite on your travel computer, that favorite will show up on your desktop computer.

So if you have an old computer and a new computer, make sure you're signed in to your Chrome account on both computers and it will synchronize your favorites on both computers - which means it will move your favorites to your new computer.

Mike

[Jim Koepke]

I was trying to move my favorites from my old laptop to a new one I purchased today.I was trying to move my favorites from my old laptop to a new one I purchased today.

Are these "favorites" applications or links for your browser?

Do you have a network or a thumb drive?

Do you have a full back up of your old laptop?

Often with just a network cable or a null cable files and such can be moved over.

All of my experience is with a different OS. Moving from one machine to the next is only a few keystrokes and a cable.

For me the cable connection was the hardest part. My back up drive uses IEEE448 (?) cabling. That standard is no longer used in the consumer market to the best of my knowledge. Fortunately there is an adapter.

Kind of like all the RS-232 gizmos we used a couple of decades ago. What keeps them alive is many technology bids are written with "no bleeding edge" conditions. In some cases this requires all components and communications devices and protocols be proven in industry for no less than five years.

This creates the problem of many industries and agencies buying into "dying edge" technology.

That becomes another super sized can o' worms.

jtk

[glenn bradley]

you don't mention which browser. In edge go to Favorites, Settings (in Favorites), Import from another browser, Export to file. Of course selecting "import" in order to "export" makes perfect sense to an OS where you select "start" in order to shut down ;-)

[John K Jordan]

By "favorites" do you mean bookmarks?

In Firefox select Bookmarks, Show All Bookmarks, Import and Backup, Export Bookmarks to HTML. Save that HTML file somewhere (or email it to yourself), load it onto the new computer, then use the same process in Import that file into the Firefox. Other browsers have the same function but I don't know the steps.

If by "Favorites" you mean something other than bookmarks, explain.

JKJ

[julian abram]

Yes, I should have mentioned I'm using Explorer. Yes, I'm just trying to move bookmarks under favorites. Most of the bookmarks are websites, etc. Thanks-

[Mike Henderson]

Internet Explorer will synchronize favorites across multiple platforms. Looks like it's pretty simple to set up. Here's how to do it (https://www.howtogeek.com/131249/how-to-synchronize-your-internet-explorer-favorites/).

The tutorial is for Windows 8 but I'm pretty sure it's the same on Window 10.

Mike

[You might think of migrating to Edge from IE. Edge is the one Microsoft will be supporting going forward. Use the IE synchronization to move your favorites to your new computer. Then install Edge and it will take the favorites from IE.]

[julian abram]

Hey fellows thanks for the good info, I did get the favorites moved after a couple hours of clicking on both laptops. Finally just transferred the old way with a jump drive. I know this could be done in 5 minutes but I only change computers about every 5 years so have to learn all over each time. Always dread buying a new phone or computer because of the info transfer. Again thanks!

[John K Jordan]

... Always dread buying a new phone or computer because of the info transfer.

Me too, really hated it! From the early '90s on I used relatively high-end multi-processor computers for my animation/graphics work and had to upgrade fairly often for processor speed reasons. Every time it cost me 8-10K and took over 50 hours to reinstall and configure all my software and local network to get things to play well enough together to where I could work efficiently again. What a royal pain.

JKJ

[Mike Henderson]

Always dread buying a new phone or computer because of the info transfer. Again thanks!

With an iPhone, if you use iCloud to backup your stuff, all you have to do is sign in on your new phone and everything will be downloaded to your new phone. Your new phone will be exactly the same way your old phone was. It's a nice feature.

I wish Microsoft would do the same thing with computers. Where you tell Microsoft that you're upgrading to a new computer and everything is moved over to your new computer - so that you new computer looks exactly like your old computer.

Mike

[Jerome Stanek]

With an iPhone, if you use iCloud to backup your stuff, all you have to do is sign in on your new phone and everything will be downloaded to your new phone. Your new phone will be exactly the same way your old phone was. It's a nice feature.

I wish Microsoft would do the same thing with computers. Where you tell Microsoft that you're upgrading to a new computer and everything is moved over to your new computer - so that you new computer looks exactly like your old computer.

Mike

Google does that to

[Ken Combs]

Too late now. But load Firefox, import IE favorites, sign into firefox synch. All your favorites/bookmarks are available to any of your devices that have Firefox, phone, laptop, desk tower etc.

[roger wiegand]

For both Chrome and Mac/iphone/ipad they sync automatically across all my devices with no intervention needed on my part. I'm quite happy to not have had to do anything with IE for the last 5 years.