Thursday, November 6, 2008

Moving Mozilla Settings Between Computers

I am an big fan of Mozilla products and I spend many hours each day using them, mostly between Firefox and Thunderbird. Since I have 3 computers that I use regularly, I find it very important to be able to easily transfer the settings I have for these programs amongst my multiple computers. Luckily, there's a very simple way to do this and I will explain how to right here:

Transferring Settings For Mozilla Firefox

1.) On the computer that you are trying to transfer your settings from, navigate to "C:\Documents and Settings\"Windows User Name"\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox"
(Note: you will have to enable Show Hidden Files to be able to see this folder. This can be done under Tools->Folder Options-> View->Select "Show Hidden Files and Folders").

2.)The files that hold all your settings for Firefox are the file "profiles.ini" and the folder "Profile" So copy both of these to a thumb drive or another location for now.



3.)Next, on the computer that you are transferring the settings to navigate to the same location
"C:\Documents and Settings\
"Windows User Name"\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox". Now, you will see a similar file and folder that we copied before, "Profile.ini" and the folder "Profiles". (Note: Firefox must be closed when performing these next steps.)

4.) Now, you can either delete or move the folder "Profiles" and the file "profiles.ini" to a different location. To be safe, I usually create another folder within the Firefox folder and store them there just in case something happens, but it's up to you. All that matters is that the older profile file and folder are not in this Firefox folder.

5.) Lastly, simply copy the folder "Profiles" and the file "profiles.ini" that you copied early into this new folder. Once they are there, open up Firefox and all your settings should be there!


Transferring Settings For Thunderbird

This is done exactly like the Firefox settings except that the files are stored in "C:\Documents and Settings\
"Windows User Name"\Application Data\Thunderbird". But you copy the exact same "Profiles" folder and "profile.ini" file within the "Thunderbird" folder to move your settings to a new computer.

Trying Out This "Blog" Thing

Well, I decided I would finally tryout hosting a blog. I think I will primarily be posting different guides and tips about computer related topics and maybe a few other random things, we shall see. Check in later since I hope to have some posts of very soon.

-Gregg