A problem has occurred with the installation of Mozilla Firefox on my computer and I need to reinstall the software. Is it possible to save my current bookmarks so that they can be brought back into the new version of Firefox? The computer is running Windows XP.

You will be glad to know that this is a fairly straight-forward process, and may not actually require you to do anything! The user-specific data for Firefox (such as bookmarks, saved passwords, etc) are stored on a per-user basis, within your Windows user profile folder. This is the same folder that holds information such as the My Documents and My Pictures for your user account. This means that you can reinstall or upgrade Firefox and your personal data related to Firefox should remain intact since it is not stored with the program files. When you reinstall Firefox all the settings for the program should also be remembered (including the location of your user data relating to Firefox, such as your bookmarks) and it should all magically appear in Firefox without you needing to do anything. In summary, on a good day you should be able to simply uninstall and reinstall the Firefox program without affecting your personal settings and data.

However, that is on a good day. While that should work fine in 90% of cases there is always a possibility that something may go wrong and your data is lost or becomes inaccessible. That’s why I always recommend taking a backup of your data just-in-case things don’t go as planned. In this case, I would strongly recommend that you take a backup of your bookmarks. The backup process should only take a few moments, and will save you from a huge headache should things not go to plan and your settings do not come back when you reinstall Firefox. This procedure is also useful in case you wish to transfer your bookmarks to a different computer.

In Firefox, go to the “Bookmarks” menu > “Organise Bookmarks”. This will open the Library window allowing you to organise and modify the bookmarks. In the toolbar there should be a button saying “Import and Backup”. Click the button to show a drop-down menu and select “Backup…”. This will export your bookmarks to a location of your choosing. The file format of the exported bookmarks is a JSON file – don’t try to open and read this yourself, as it won’t make much sense. However, if you do need to recover your bookmarks (or transfer them to a different computer) you just need to go back into the Library, click the “Import and Backup” button then select “Restore” > “Choose File…” and select the backed-up bookmarks file then click the “Open” button to import the bookmarks back into Firefox.

A common question which I am asked relates to keeping your bookmarks and Firefox settings synchronised between computers. Such a facility is particularly handy if you use multiple computers (such as a desktop and laptop) and don’t wish to constantly have to manually transfer these items between computers. Firefox Sync is a service that was launched mainstream early last year (you may recall that I mentioned this as a tip of the week) which allows you to do exactly this – synchronise data between Firefox installations on multiple computers. Your data (such as bookmarks, settings, etc.) is stored securely within your Firefox Sync account on the Mozilla servers and is then synchronised to any Firefox installations which you have linked to your Firefox Sync account. Likewise, if you make a change (such as add a bookmark) on a computer that is then updated to Firefox Sync so that the change can be propagated across to all your installations of Firefox on different computers. As you can see, this is quite a handy service. You can find out more about Firefox Sync at www.mozilla.com/firefox/sync with more technical details available at support.mozilla.org/sync .