PC Doctor December 15, 2011
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Dear PC Doctor,
How can I save my Mozilla Firefox Bookmarks? In the past I've lost them to a computer crash. What can I do now to back them up for easy restoration? Thanks!
Larry
Hey Larry,
Excellent idea! I'm always forgetting to back up my bookmarks, and it usually comes back to bite me. Backing up Bookmarks is the same across most internet browsers including: Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. In order to save the Bookmarks you must “export” them. For Firefox - Click Bookmarks Menu and select Organize Bookmarks. This will open up your Bookmark Library. You should see all of your Bookmarks. Click “Import and Backup” and then “Export HTML”. Here you will be given an option to save the Bookmarks as an HTML file. For Internet Explorer - Go to File and choose “Import and Export” and then click “Next”. Under “Choose an action to perform,” select “Export Favorites”. Choose the favorites you desire to back up and “Click Next”. You will then be given an option to save the Favorites as an HTML file. (Note: Internet Explorer refers to Bookmarks as Favorites.) For Google Chrome – Click the wrench in the upper right hand corner. Select “Bookmark Manager”. Following the opening of the new window, click “Tools” from the menu bar. From the drop down menu select “Export Bookmarks”. A new window will open, allowing you to save the Bookmarks as an HTML file.
Since you wish to back up the Bookmarks in case of a computer crash or a reformat, you will have to save the HTML file to an external source. You may use a thumb drive, CD-R, an external hard drive, or a floppy. I would recommend labeling the HTML file well, and then saving it along with any other backed up files. Safe computing!
PC Doctor
Dear PC Doctor,
I've been learning to use the website eBay lately to buy gifts for the holidays. I'm hoping to save some money on some good deals. However, it takes a lot of time to go through the search results when I'm trying to find the auctions I want to bid on. Is there a way to make this easier than I'm making it?
Trisha
Dear Trisha,
Yes, there are a few eBay tips I can give you. When you want to keep an eye on a certain eBay auction, there's the option to add it to your “Watchlist”. You can get to your watchlist by going to “My eBay”. On an auction page, look under the “Bid Now” button. There should be another button entitled “Add to Watchlist”. Click this and it will be saved in “My eBay” so you can keep an eye on it. eBay will even send you an email reminding you that watchlist items are ending soon. If you're watching a lot of items you can even organize your watched items in categories.
It might also be worthwhile to check out Saved Searches. New auctions are added daily and it can take a lot of time to search and find these new auctions. What you can do is take a search that's given you good results before and save it so you can come back later to check for new auctions. After using the search bar, click on Save Search and give it a suitable name. It will then ask you if you want to receive an email when new auctions are added. You may want to do this if you don't think that they're will be many new auctions every day. Otherwise, your email inbox will be filled with emails from eBay.
One last tip: when searching on eBay, you may often see results in your search that aren’t what you're looking for. When you add a word to your search query it uses that to find matching auctions. However, if you put a little dash in front of the word like this: “-something” eBay will exclude all the auctions that match up with “something”. Recently when I was trying to search eBay for a manual typewriter I kept coming across results for electric typewriters, which I did not want. So my new search ended up looking like this: “manual typewriter -electric -electronic” Voila! All of the electric/electronic typewriters were excluded from my search!
PC Doctor
Until next time... happy computing!
