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My Bookmarks fly to the Cloud

Updated: 15-Mar-2012

With latest version of Google Chrome (I'm using 17.x), you can now directly sign into Chrome from Options->Peronsal and access your bookmarks across computers. You no longer would need to export the bookmarks to Firefox using the Google Toolbar for Firefox, which is no longer supported by Google. The Google Toolbar is now available only for IE.

Original (dated) article below ...
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I have a queer problem of too many! I surf a lot, I subscribe to a lot and I bookmark a lot. Some numbers: 1 laptop and 1 netbook at home, 1 laptop and 1 desktop at office, sometimes its my Kindle and definitely my N900 when I'm on the move. So 6 devices out there and usually 2 browsers on most of them (yes Kindle only as one webkit based experimental implementation).

So my bookmarks are all over the place, scattered over at least 10 different places. And each time I'm working on one box, I wish I had access to the bookmark I made a few hours ago on the other box. And forget the upgrades. Its a nightmare. Backup everything and then restore. What a pain!

So here comes the cloud to the rescue. I decided to move it all to the cloud! Definitely sounds better than "I decided to move it all to the web". I decided to use Google Bookmarks to store all my bookmarks in one central place so that I can access them from anywhere, from everywhere. No export-import/migration-upgrade issues. Well to be precise just one final time and then no more! I had to move my current bookmarks right ...

Here are the steps on how to move all your existing bookmarks to the Google Cloud. The basic approach is to export existing bookmarks from all your browsers, i.e. Chrome, IE, Opera to Firefox and then using Google Toolbar for Firefox to publish these bookmarks to the cloud. Yes you read it right, even Chrome bookmarks have to be pushed using Firefox. There is no other option available in Chrome at present. Somebody definitely forgot something :P

Export Bookmarks:

No need to export bookmarks to a separate file from IE and Opera. Firefox can handle them direct. But you will need to export bookmarks from Chrome as below:

1. Open the Chrome wench or settings icon and select Bookmark Manager
2. You get all bookmarks listed in a new tab
3. Select the Organize -> Export Bookmarks
4. Enter the html file and location where to save your bookmarks

Import Bookmarks to Firefox:

Now lets centralize all bookmarks into Firefox. Follow these steps:

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + B or click on the Firefox Menu on top left and select Bookmarks -> Show all Bookmarks to get to the Bookmarks Library dialog.
2. Now click on Import and Backup -> Import HTML... to open the Import From dialog.
3. Select Opera and run through the steps
4. Repeat the above steps for IE and get in the bookmarks.
5. Finally select the From an HTML file and point to the html file exported earlier from Chrome.

Now all your bookmarks are in Firefox. You can verify this by checking the available Bookmarks from the drop down.

Publish to the Cloud:

Now get Google toolbar for Firefox from this link: http://toolbar.google.com

Once installed you will see the Google toolbar come up in your browser. Select the Bookmarks drop down menu and click on Import Firefox Bookmarks.

This will now take you to Google Bookmarks page with all the Firefox bookmarks listed. You can multi-select all the bookmarks that you want to push to Google Bookmarks and finally click on the Import button.

Hurrah! All your bookmarks are on the cloud now and accessible at www.google.com/bookmarks. You can now create lists, set bookmark permissions, share the lists with others and even tweet about your bookmark lists.
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Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 15, 2012 at 5:14 AM

    There is no toolbar for firebox... well this is said on their website....so Google drop off this?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. chetankjainMarch 15, 2012 at 12:24 PM

      Thanks Anonymous for pointing this out. This post is slightly out dated now and have updated the post as you can see.

      Delete

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