Article | Copy and Import Firefox Profiles, Settings, Extensions, Bookmarks, the Manual Way

A few days ago I featured MozBackup, as a simple way to backup, copy, import, and export Mozilla application profiles (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc). Unfortunately, I also lamented the fact that MozBackup was its own application that needed to be installed in all the PC's you want to import from/export to. It also unfortunately wasn't compatible with OSX, when cross-platform compatibility was one of the most important features of Mozilla's apps.



Well, today I'll show you how to transfer your Firefox profiles from one computer to another manually, without much hassle. Doing this works without having to install any external programs, and also works on OSX.



First of all, locate your Firefox profile folder. On Windows XP machines, it can be found here:



C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla



On Vista machines, the address is:



C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox



In that folder, you'll see another folder called Profiles, as well as a file called profiles.ini.



To copy your profile to another computer running Firefox, copy that profile folder as well as the profiles.ini file to the same location in the new computer. If you're transferring to a Mac, the location is



\Library>Application Support>Firefox



And with that, just copy the old Profiles folder and the profiles.ini file, delete the other Profiles folder, and you're done!

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