Quick Fix: My Favorites are missing after Windows 10 upgrade
After the upgrade to Windows 10, you may discover that in the new version of IE, called Microsoft Edge, your favorites are missing!
You’d think the import of your bookmarks/favorites would happen automatically during the Windows 10 upgrade, but alas…
Not to worry though, because it’s a piece of cake to restore all of your missing Favorites!
Okay, here goes.
First, open Edge, which is the blue “e” icon on your taskbar.
Once Edge is running, click the Hub icon in the upper right corner (3 horizontal lines) and then click the Import favorites link:
Then select Internet Explorer, and click the Import button:
That’s it! Your old Internet Explorer bookmark toolbar and all your favorites should now be restored.
Wasn’t that easy?
Shortlink:
Followed these steps. When clicked on Import from Internet Explorer, message says “unable to import”
D’OH! Well, it’s supposed to work that way. It did for me, but that doesn’t mean anything… Welcome to Windows 10!
It worked for me instantaneously! Thank you so much, Scottie!!
<3
Ok, I opened Edge, Hub, and clicked import favorites from IE, and it says, Done….but, there is nothing there. Did they go someplace else? (No, I am not terribly technical, but, I sure had a lot of favorites I would sure like to get back. Thanks!
I had the same experience as Carole – imported Favorites from IE, but can’t find them, can’t pin them to my browser page. Where are they and how can I make them visible? Thanks.
In the top right corner of the browser, there should be 3 horizontal lines. Click that, and your favorites are supposed to be there. To get the bookmarks “toolbar” back, you can click the 3 dots, click “Settings”, and then click the switch for “Show the Favorites bar”.
If none of the bookmarks are there, then for some reason the import didn’t work.
Thank you so much for this. We were very frustrated trying to locate our favorites. We had to dig through a lot of unhelpful post until we found yours. Thanks!
I have hundreds of reference pages for my college papers saved in my favorites so I had a major freak out when I saw nothing was there! This helped a lot! Thank you so much!
OK…so I got the favorites back, but how do I pin certain ones to my favorites bar since they did not go there? THANKS
@Cindy M
Well, that’s odd… The only way I can see to do it is to load the favorite in a tab, and then you can drag-n-drop the tab’s title into the Favorites bar. ???
After the last windows ten upgrade, my favorites no longer work. In fact when I click on the three has marks they open and then the whole computer freezes. I can log off but I am perplexed as to what to do to fix it.
Oh dear. I’m not sure what to do either… But I can tell you that the latest Win 10 version has quite a few bugs in it. It was supposed to be a step forward, but it seems they didn’t do a very good job of testing. Hopefully this will all be fixed… after the Holidays, I’m sure!
Many thanks – this worked for me – I’d had a panic about my lovely organised folders disappearing, but they are all back now.
Just installed Windows10. Imported favorites from IE as explained in earlier posts, but no favorites actually imported… and now my old favorites folder that I dug for and found in the windows.old folder in the users folder are now gone. Please tell me that I can find them somewhere! I don’t mind copy/pasting…
Windows 10 just updated again. This time it deleted all the Favorites I had set AFTER the “upgrade” from Internet Explorer to Windows 10. Anything that wasn’t in a folder is gone (e.g. Google maps), some folders are no longer there, and some folders are there but have lost what was in them.
Dear god, it just gets better and better! I’m glad I don’t use IE/Edge.
I had the same result as ‘Writer Eva’. I have been using Windows 10 since August and had imported my Favorites at that time. After the latest upgrade (December 12/15) all of my Favorites disappeared, except a few in my Favorites Bar. When I tried to import them again, I got some of them back, but not all of them. Many are still missing.
I second Eve’s comment! I’d successfully imported my favourites but could not find out how to see them until reading this thread.
upgraded to win10 today. When I import my favorites it says “Done”.. but they are nowhere to be found. Any help would be appreciated.
Hope this helps. I will try it.
Dont have the second E don’t see the import favorites
Just happened the same to me as did to Writer Eva.
Any suggestion to prevent this to happen when windows 10 will update again? Any suggestion for another browser? I am done with Edge!
Well, you could export your bookmarks to a file, and then do the next big Windows update when it comes out. But of course, this shouldn’t be necessary. It seems to be one of the problems of Win 10: they’re in such a hurry to get “fast updates” out the door, they don’t bother to check everything as thoroughly as they should.
As for other browsers, Chrome is the most popular at the moment, and it’s very good. I use both Chrome and Firefox… at the same time. I have 2 screens and lots of tabs to keep open! 😉
I upgraded from Win7 to Win10, I think around December 28. I am predisposed to dislike everything that Microsoft does (including 10 itself) but the process was surprisingly painless. My favorites even imported OK. My problem now is that I do manual backup and wanted to copy my favorites folder to a zip file to CD or DVD. Where is the folder? Searching the web for advice gives me two different locations. Both get me to “favorites” folders but one of those is completely empty and the other does not include a new favorite which I added (from Edge) an hour ago (even though I rebooted since.) Also as a test I changed the name of one “favorite” in Explorer and I do not see that change in Edge. I see no point in backing up the folder if it does not have my latest changes. Can anyone confirm the folder location of Edge favorites (and confirm that it contains up-to-date changes?)
I followed your instructions. It didn’t import my favorites, it imported the last 35 sites I visited. Is it possible to go back to 8?
where did my sound capability go when I changed to Windows 10? How do I retrieve it. Thanks (02/18/16)
I only got 6 folders back. I’m in deep trouble now. What about saved passwords. Are they anywhere?