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Backing Up Your Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird and Netscape Profiles

In my December 25th newsletter, I answered the question of reader Frank Lid, who wanted to know how to back up his Firefox bookmarks. In that case, I told him how to find the profiles (including un-hiding the directory, if necessary) so he could copy them to a flash drive, floppy disk, CD, or to another compute.

I've now found a much easier way to back up the Firefox bookmarks. Better than that, it handles bookmarks, history, address books and more multiple Mozilla-related programs.

Website: http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/
Program: MozBackup - backup utility for user profiles in Mozilla programs
Developer: Jasnapaka
License: Freeware
Current: Version 1.4.3 Released: October 27, 2005

There's a great little freeware utility called MozBackup for backing up your Firefox profiles and settings. MozBackup can also handle your profiles in the Mozilla suite, including those in the new Mozilla suite codenamed "SeaMonkey". If you use the email application Thunderbird, also from the Mozilla Foundation, MozBackup can again come to your rescue. It can also back up Netscape profiles. MozBackup automatically finds the profiles for backup and then allows users to decide where to save the backups.

MozBackup allows you to password your backups, which is a neat touch -- as long as you don't forget the password! Of course, MozBackup also restores the profiles you have previously backed up.

If you want to synchronize your settings between multiple computers, this may be your key. For example, when backing up your Firefox profile, not only does it back up your bookmarks, it also backs up your History Saved Passwords, Cookies, Saved Form details, Downloaded Files List, and Security Certificates.

MozBackup is available in an Installer version and also as a zip file. When you unzip the zip file, you get the actual program files, not an installer -- so be sure to copy or move the files to the program folder of your choice. My next step, after moving the unzipped files into a new folder in C:\Program Files, was to create a MozBackup short cut in my Start Menu, so I could find it again.

Start MozBackup and choose whether to back up or to restore

Then, select the program's user profiles are to be backed up. At that point, the Next button becomes available.

Select the profile to be backed up. Select where to save the backup file, and then click Next to actually do the backup.

Now, you get to decide whether to password-protect the file or not. Click Yes or No.

Then, just before the actual backup, you get to to accept or change which items about the profile will be saved, such as bookmarks, history, etc. Then click Next and MozBackup will do its work.

On the final screen, if you want to back up another profile, be sure to click in the checkbox "New backup or restore" before clicking Finish.

Link to this page — just add this code to your web page!

<a href="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/backing-up-mozilla-firefox-thunderbird-netscape-profiles.php">Backing Up Your Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird and Netscape Profiles</a>

Copyright © 2006 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.