Forum Discussion
Help! How to import favorites and collections from recovered data from a broken computer
Hey there!
I have a bit of an issue: I am a happy user of Edge (and the new Edge). For my thesis I had tons of folders with Favorites (including all tabs I had saved in the old Edge that the Chromium Edge put in a faraway folder- that was not a great surprise; these should have become Collections directly) and the new Collections feature used. Unfortunately, my computer broke down (water spillage), but the data is recovered. On my new computer, however, I cannot seem to be able to import or find my old Edge favorites or collections, no matter what I try (as the files that are in AppData are not HTML files or something). Is there any way to save my thesis, as literally most of my research work was in Edge and I thought it was all happily saved? I am a bit desperately trying to find a way to be able to put all my work back into the browser so I can continue working. Thanks in advance to helping this non-tech-savy student out!
Veerle_vW I tentatively have some good news!
It sounds like the data exists somewhere in AppData, and you may have recovered it, so the trick is just to get Microsoft Edge to read that profile's data. We'd recommend trying to manually choose the profile directory via the command line. This might be a bit on the technical side of your familiarity levels, but it will hopefully be worth it.
- First, make sure MS Edge is pinned to your Taskbar.
- Then, right-click that pin, then right-click the MS Edge icon in that right-click menu to bring up the real context menu (not the jumplist):
- Click properties.
- In the dialog that pops up, look at the Target field:
- If you don't have the --profile-directory switch, add it.
- As for the name of the profile, that's where you go into AppData. (Specifically, for Stable, it'll be %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data.)
- Now, you just need to know what the folder is called that your old data is in.
- By default, Chromium uses "Default", so drop the "Default" folder into User Data (getting rid of the one from the new install if necessary).
- Or, you can honestly call it anything they want. You just need to make sure that the name of that folder matches the string in the --profile-directory switch. So, in the screenshot, we have a folder called %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Edge Dev\User Data\Profile 1 that the shortcut is pointing to.
- Then, when you click on the MS Edge shortcut, it should launch MS Edge with that profile data.
We wouldn't recommend doing anything fancy to add new profiles since there might be other places MS Edge stores that data that it wouldn't be expecting people to alter outside of the browser. Instead, just replace whatever profile exists in your new install.
Hopefully that helps!
Fawkes (they/them)
Project & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge
7 Replies
Veerle_vW Oh no, we're so sorry to hear that! Yes, we want to do whatever we can to help save a thesis. A couple of quick questions for you:
- Had you been signed into a Microsoft account on the previous and new computer?
- If so, was it a personal account or an EDU/Enterprise account?
- Can you please try signing out and back in?
- Was sync turned on for your Favorites and Collections on your previous device?
- What channel and build of MSFT Edge have you been running?
- Have you submitted diagnostic data through the browser (Shift+Alt+I) yet?
- If so and if you're comfortable with us looking into this, can you please send me a DM with the first sentence of the feedback you submitted? (You should have received a confirmation email with it.)
- If not, you can DM me and I will give you a special code to include to ensure that it gets to the right team ASAP.
Fawkes (they/them)
Project & Community Manager - Microsoft EdgeDeleted Thanks so much! Much appreciated!
1. I don't think I was logged in, at least not in Edge I believe. I never wanted to use any syncs or online saves (just on my own harddisc) for privacy reasons. I am logged in now, tried to sign out and in, but that did not work so I guess it was all just saved on my own computer.
2. I have no clue, but probably not. I have had a lot of issues with all kinds of autosyncs, so I always made manual backups from my data.
3. I have the Chromium-Edge, Version 83.0.478.37 (64-bits)
4. No I haven't, I didn't know that function existed! Thanks for pointing it out. I will DM you!
Thanks so much,
Veerle (she/her)
Veerle_vW I tentatively have some good news!
It sounds like the data exists somewhere in AppData, and you may have recovered it, so the trick is just to get Microsoft Edge to read that profile's data. We'd recommend trying to manually choose the profile directory via the command line. This might be a bit on the technical side of your familiarity levels, but it will hopefully be worth it.
- First, make sure MS Edge is pinned to your Taskbar.
- Then, right-click that pin, then right-click the MS Edge icon in that right-click menu to bring up the real context menu (not the jumplist):
- Click properties.
- In the dialog that pops up, look at the Target field:
- If you don't have the --profile-directory switch, add it.
- As for the name of the profile, that's where you go into AppData. (Specifically, for Stable, it'll be %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data.)
- Now, you just need to know what the folder is called that your old data is in.
- By default, Chromium uses "Default", so drop the "Default" folder into User Data (getting rid of the one from the new install if necessary).
- Or, you can honestly call it anything they want. You just need to make sure that the name of that folder matches the string in the --profile-directory switch. So, in the screenshot, we have a folder called %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Edge Dev\User Data\Profile 1 that the shortcut is pointing to.
- Then, when you click on the MS Edge shortcut, it should launch MS Edge with that profile data.
We wouldn't recommend doing anything fancy to add new profiles since there might be other places MS Edge stores that data that it wouldn't be expecting people to alter outside of the browser. Instead, just replace whatever profile exists in your new install.
Hopefully that helps!
Fawkes (they/them)
Project & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge
- Had you been signed into a Microsoft account on the previous and new computer?
