Where'd my Favorites go?If you used Internet Explorer in Windows 7 or 8, all your bookmarks were saved in your Favorites folder.

After the upgrade to Windows 10, you may discover that in the new version of IE, called Microsoft Edge, your favorites are missing!

You’d think the import of your bookmarks/favorites would happen automatically during the Windows 10 upgrade, but alas…

Not to worry though, because it’s a piece of cake to restore all of your missing Favorites!

Okay, here goes.

First, open Edge, which is the blue “e” icon on your taskbar.

Once Edge is running, click the Hub icon in the upper right corner (3 horizontal lines) and then click the Favorites Settings link (which used to be called “Import Favorites”):

Favorites Step 1

Then select Internet Explorer, and click the Import button:

Import IE Favorites into Edge

That’s it! Your old Internet Explorer bookmark toolbar and all your favorites should now be restored.

Nope, that didn’t work…

Okay, now it gets really fun.

You should still have Internet Explorer installed on Windows 10, but it’s kind of “hidden”.

So, you can just click Start and search for Internet Explorer, and run it. If your bookmarks are there and you’re happy enough with IE, carry on! You’re done. If you want to use Edge, then read on…

IE can export all your bookmarks as a file called bookmark.htm. This is pretty handy, but there’s a problem: Edge currently cannot import bookmarks from an HTM file!

What to do, what to do?

First, you’ll need another browser installed on your puter. From the above screenshot, you can see I have Chrome installed. If you don’t have another browser, download and install Chrome.

What you’re going to do here is install Chrome, export your IE bookmarks into a file, import that Bookmark file into Chrome, and then redo the steps above to import your bookmarks from Chrome instead of Internet Explorer. Isn’t this fun – and unnecessarily complicated? Thanks, MS! 😉

Next:

  1. Click Start, and type: Internet Explorer
  2. Click Internet Explorer to run it
  3. You should see all your bookmarks there. If you do, you’re in luck! If you don’t, “Something went wrong”, which is Microsoft’s way of saying, “You’re screwed!” 🙁
  4. Next, click the Star (favorites icon), then the down arrow, and then pick Import and export…

Internet Explorer export bookmarks
In the window that pops up, choose Export to a file, and click Next.

On the What would you like to export? screen, pick everything and click Next:

IE Export Bookmarks - Everything!
For the folder, make sure the top Favorites folder is selected, and click Next:

IE Export Bookmarks - Favorites Folder
On the next screen, you have to choose where you want bookmark.htm to be saved. Pick someplace good, and remember where you saved it!

Next, you need to run Chrome.

Then, find the Import bookmarks and settings function like so:

Chrome import bookmarks
Next, you’ll want to use the From: pull-down menu and pick Bookmarks HTML File:

Chrome Import Bookmarks - Step 2Finally, on the next dialog box, click the Choose file button, and select the bookmark.htm file you exported from IE earlier:

Chrome Import Bookmarks - Step 3
When the import is done, you should have your old Internet Explorer bookmarks in Chrome!

Now, all you have to do is go back to the top of this article, and try to import your bookmarks again… but this time, choose Chrome:

Edge import bookmarks from Chrome

Wasn’t that easy? Okay, maybe not…

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