Extra Links When Importing Bookmarks/Settings From Edge

1

When I import my bookmarks and settings from IE, it has links that I can not find. I do an export of my IE bookmarks and they are not listed.

To be perfectly honest, these are bookmarks that I thought I deleted a long time ago but they are being imported. I need to find out where they are in IE and then delete them. I’ve checked all my devices - since my bookmarks are synced - but no device has these bookmarks.

So, my question is, where is Brave pulling bookmarks in order to import them if I can’t find them anywhere? (And, yes, they are bookmarks that I saved a long time ago but they should have been deleted.)

Thanks for any help.

Steps to recreate issue:

  1. Enter Brave Settings
  2. Select Bookmarks/Import Bookmark and Settings
  3. Choose ‘Microsoft Edge’
  4. Select ‘Favorites/Bookmarks’
  5. Select ‘Import’

A new ‘Imported from Edge’ folder is create on my toolbar but some of the bookmarks can’t be found anywhere in Edge - although they used to exist.

2

@DetroitBound

Start Over . . . and:

Run Microsoft Edge

Export your Bookmarks [Favorites] from Microsoft Edge

The exported Bookmarks filename, will likely be in the form of: ‘favorites_M_D_YY.html’ such as: ‘favorites_5_30_22.html’

I suggest that you rename it to: ‘favorites_5_30_2022_NOT_EDITED.html’

Make a duplicate of that file (name: ‘favorites_5_30_2022_NOT_EDITED_DUPLICATE.html’), and keep that duplicate, safe.

Make a duplicate of ‘favorites_5_30_2022_NOT_EDITED.html’, and name the duplicate: ‘favorites_5_30_2022_TO_BE_EDITED.html’

Use a capable text editor, in order to search the text-edit-able ‘favorites_5_30_2022_TO_BE_EDITED.html’ file, and remove the un-wanted Bookmarks. I recommend text editors:

Just Great Software - EditPad Lite / EditPad Pro , at:

Mac OS users: BBEdit (try the free download) at:

–

When you have finished your editing, rename the edited file, to: ‘favorites_5_30_2022_EDITED.html’.

And make a duplicate of the edited file (name: ‘favorites_5_30_2022_EDITED_DUPLICATE.html’.

So, if you mess up . . . you have plenty to fall back upon. Sigh of relief.

–

Next, you could clear out all the Bookmarks in Microsoft Edge, and import ‘favorites_5_30_2022_EDITED.html’ into Microsoft Edge, and then import Bookmarks, etc., from Edge to Brave Browser.

Or, go ahead and import Bookmarks, etc., from Edge to Brave Browser, and thereafter, clear out the Bookmarks from Brave Browser, and then import ‘favorites_5_30_2022_EDITED.html’ into Brave Browser.

–

3

Hi, thanks for the information. Unfortunately, when I export my favorites from Edge, those links do not show up in the file.

Also, to make it more interesting, I went to another computer, imported my bookmarks from edge into Brave and the same links showed up. But when I exported the links to a file, they weren’t there.

So, there has to be some online/synced values being pulled from Edge when they are imported into Brave. I’ve checked all my computers and none of them have those bookmarks. My only thoughts are maybe they were saved on a very old computer that I never use but have been archived by Edge somewhere and there are the actual ‘live’ links and an archived file somewhere that Brave is pulling. Or perhaps they are some type of bookmark - and not a favorite. But those are supposedly the same things in the Edge world.

Who knows, maybe it’s my old Microsoft Window Phones coming back to haunt me since I left them for the Pixel…

So, they do not exist when I view then in my Edge Browsers.
They do not exist when I export them to a file on all my computers.
They do not show up on my Pixel

I’m assuming there has to be some computer/phone somewhere that has them saved. But that means a file has to exist on my physical computer I’m using to import since I’m also assuming Brave is only importing them from something on the current hardware I’m using.

Finally, just for fun, I deleted all my bookmarks from Edge. Then did an export to verify the file was empty:

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Favorites bar

Then I closed down Edge and did an import into Brave.

They all showed up again…So Brave has to be pulling them from somewhere else.

4

@289wk

Didn’t realize I needed to add your name and also did an ID10T error by actually adding the html from the file. But the file did not have any links in it.

5

@289wk ,

We might have the beginning of a solution. I went into Firefox to see if they would pull the results. Firefox had 3 options: Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Edge Legacy and Microsoft Internet Explorer. (it also had Brave but that’s an outlier)

I imported the bookmarks from Microsoft Edge and there was no data pulled. This is correct since I have not imported them back. However, when I imported the bookmarks from Microsoft Edge Legacy, all the ‘missing’ bookmarks were uploaded.

So, it seems Brave is pulling the bookmarks from ‘Microsoft Edge Legacy’

And of course download.com no longer allows you to simply download the Microsoft edge legacy browser.