How to move previous bookmarks, old email, and settings to a new profile

Note: If you're using a Netware connected computer on campus, please see the "How do you tell Mozilla to go back to using the profile on your H: drive?" item located here.

If you're at home, and something's happened that resulted in a new profile being created, you may suddenly realize that you're missing your old bookmarks, address books, and local mail folders. One way to fix this is to locate your old profile directory and copy all of the files and directories in it to your new profile directory.

Here are a few tips about how to locate your old profile:

1. Use the Windows Search function to find Files or Folders called "bookmarks.html" on your C: drive.

- This should return more than one result.

2. Look at the size of the files and the time/date stamp on them to determine which file contains your old bookmarks.

- In general, the right file should be the largest size, and will have a time/date stamp that is recent, but not the newest.

Note: You can double click on the file from the search screen. It will open in a web browser and allow you to see the bookmarks contained within it.

3. Make a note of the directory that the file is contained in.

- This directory is the location of your old profile. It will also contain all of your old address books and email folders.

4. Also make a note of the directory that contains the newest version of the file.

- This directory is the location of your new profile.

5. Using the Windows File Explorer, go to the old profile directory that you noted in the previous steps. Copy all of the files and directories in it to the directory containing the new profile. Answer Yes to replace the files in the new profile location.

- If you only want to copy over specific items, rather than replace them en masse, please see the list of the file types in the profile directory here.


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