Test your AOL Favorites import functionality
Posted Feb 21st 2008 6:31PM by Laura Peterson
Filed under: Member Education, AOL Desktop
update 2/22: After completing the myAOL import, you may need to sign out and sign back in again in order for the host (myAOL) to finish synching up with AOL Desktop.
Hi everyone,
I'm writing to you today to ask for your help in checking the favorites / bookmarks migration process in AOL Desktop.
We've heard that a few people are having problems transferring their favorites over from 9.0 or 9.1 -- either the Setup Wizard doesn't complete, or some of the favorites don't show up in AOL Desktop. (The Favorites don't get lost or deleted, they just don't seem to be be "seen" by the AOL Desktop software.)
The AOL Desktop team and I are trying to get to the bottom of these problems, and we'd like some information so we can improve the experience for everyone.
If you're up for it, we'd like you to try going to myAOL (my.aol.com) and "importing" your AOL favorites to that site. MyAOL is the web version of the AOL favorites / bookmarks system.
If you can get all your AOL Favorites to appear on myAOL, we'll have some more information to go from.
Below are the directions for loading your AOL Favorites onto my.aol.com as well as a refresher on how to get to all your Favorites within the AOL Desktop browser. Please send me an email or share your experience by posting a comment (about this issue only, please) to this blog post.
Testing your AOL Favorites import functionality:
Before you begin: Make sure you know how to find all of your favorites in AOL Desktop: Please ensure you're signed into AOL Desktop, then click on the "Favorites" button between the URL and search field in your Browser. Your Favorites sidepanel will expand on the left. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the favorites list, if necessary, and look for the "portable favorites" folder (which also includes your screenname in its title). Click on the blue arrow to the left to expand the "portable favorites" folder. It should include all the Favorites you had in previous versions of AOL which have been transferred over. If it doesn't, please let us know, then do this test by going to myAOL to see if the rest of your favorites do come over to AOL Desktop. Thanks!! The questions we have for you: Q. Did the import to myAOL work? Q. In your new "imported on...<date>" folders, do you have favorites in AOL Desktop that didn't make it over before? (In other words, have all your AOL Favorites from 9.0/9.1 been transferred over now to AOL Desktop?)
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Terrie is the lead product manager on the AOL Desktop Affinity software. Terrie works to define new views of Desktop. Like the Asylum Desktop and LemonDrop Desktop. Take a look, they are neat!
Summer is a Sr. Manager for AOL Member Communications. While she has no ties directly to the product development team, she has been a contributor to many AOL blogs over the last few years and is excited to bring a non-product team perspective to the Desktop blog.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
1. After contacting help from aol tech help, I tried to find setup wizard and it wasn't there but a desktop blog was. After trying Laura's way,the import didn't work but the setup wizard appeared so I tried that. It said "unable to import".
Posted at 10:20AM on Feb 22nd 2008 by Gloria Spanos
2. I followed steps to import missing favorites...comment stated import was complete in a file with today's date. Went to my favorites (portables) and clicked on blue arrow...no file showed and do not know where else to check.
Posted at 10:47AM on Feb 22nd 2008 by Susie Steele
3. Sisie, try signing off Desktop and back on. That did the trick for me after Desktop synced with the Host. I now have the proper dated folder.
Posted at 3:55PM on Feb 22nd 2008 by SBSBJB
4. did it all and still cant find some of my favs.
Posted at 4:38PM on Feb 22nd 2008 by tom
5. That's right; if you're having problems seeing the two folders in both myAOL and Desktop after importing, you may need to sign off then back on again in order to get the host to synch properly. Just added a comment on this to the blog entry.
Posted at 4:36PM on Feb 22nd 2008 by Laura Peterson
6. I haven't had any issues at all with importing favorites. However, I haven't stored many favorites. The maximum that I may have could be about 50 or so.
Denver
Posted at 4:58PM on Feb 22nd 2008 by Denver
7. Did the import from AOL Desktop using the Setup Wizard. The import process reported success, but the imported Favorite Places did not appear in the side bar's "Portable Favorites" section. However, going to the Favorites tab in my.aol.com showed the imported folder with all the FPs inside. After signing out and back in from AOL Desktop, the imported FPs showed up as well in the sidebar.
Posted at 8:36PM on Feb 22nd 2008 by Alberto Cobas
8. I haven't yet tried to import my favs either to My AOL or Desktop because I have been going through them all morning and afternoon to delete the ones that are no longer valid, the site no longer exists, or I just don't have any use for it these days. You see, I have favs back to the early 90s and certainly don't want to have them either on MyAOL or Desktop now. It would be nice if there was a way to tell wich ones are relatively new and choose to import only those. Just a suggestion here Franki
Posted at 2:59PM on Feb 23rd 2008 by Franki
9. Ya know---I was checking my favs while on Desktop on Frida and I found that all my Favs had already been brought in by a previous transporting I had done. This was in both Desktop and MyAOL, so there was nothing to import. You see, I don't use favs that much. I prefer the auo-fill of the URL you get in full AOL. Franki
Posted at 11:43AM on Feb 25th 2008 by Franki
10. **Susie and Tom**, can you please confirm if signing out then signing back in fixed your issue? If not, please email me so we can dig deeper to fix the problem.
Posted at 11:24AM on Feb 26th 2008 by Laura Peterson
11. I'm trying to Import AOL favorites from AOL 9.0 on ANOTHER computer. I Saved the Favorites and moved the .pfc file to the new computer with AOL 10 Desktop, but no Favorites were imported when I ran the Setup wizard. How do you import AOL 9.0 Saved Favorites into AOL 10 Desktop on a different computer with ONLY AOL 10 Desktop installed??
Posted at 9:50PM on Mar 5th 2008 by Eric G Hanson
12. I tried the import & it says it was done. I have the file that says Portable favorites (which I think is stupid) but it says I need to sign in to open it & won't let me. It has worked a couple of times but not most of the time. I have to go back to 9.1 in order to get to my favorites. Why can't it just import the favoroites without all the nonsense?
Posted at 7:23PM on Mar 7th 2008 by Della Leftridge
13. How do I save the tabs on AOL Destop .If i restart my comp they're gone
Posted at 1:04PM on Mar 16th 2008 by rkissman
14. I have several screen names on my account. Some imported my favorites with first try. One I had to try the my.aol.com thing, but once I did it was there. On one tho...It worked on the my.aol.com, but is still not on desktop. I have tried restarting aol and even the whole computer and it still is not there on the aol desktop favorites. When I try to use the wizard it starts trying to import, then I get a message that says "unable to import favorites". No matter how many times I try it keeps saying that.
Posted at 2:20AM on Mar 21st 2008 by steveeeverett
15. Has anyone figured this out yet? I have tried everything and still cannot get my favorites to import. Is AOL going to fix this bug?
Why can't we just import the pfc file like we did with other versions of AOL when upgrading or reinstalling.
Posted at 11:20AM on Apr 2nd 2008 by CB
16. I followed the steps to import my favorites, but I got the message, "Import Error, Your Favorite Places could not be imported at this time. Please try again later." It did not work
Posted at 4:30PM on Apr 21st 2008 by Dave
17. I tried the set up wizard and it said it was importing for almost 24 hours before i cancelled it. I have maybe 40-50 favorites from version 9.1 that I am trying to import. I also tried the above steps with my.aol.com and I had the same error message as Dave. I'm at a loss of what else to do.
I also have a lot of emails saved in my personal folders that I want to import but dont know how. Can anyone help?? thanks!
Posted at 1:44AM on Apr 24th 2008 by Mary
18. I can't get it either, did the upgrade to 10.0, it said the favorites would be easy to switch! Well...went to live help twice, and both times they said it was "system maintenance" and neither would commit to when said "maintenance" would end....I either get "unable to import" or the little spinning circles just spin and spin forever....
Posted at 4:24PM on Apr 26th 2008 by JA
19. Well, I also have had no success in importing my favorites from 9.0 into either AOL Desktop or MyAOL. When I tried the steps to import them into MyAOL, I got the error msg: "Import Error, Your Favorite Places could not be imported at this time. Please try again later." Additionally, nowhere have I found a folder that says "Portable Favorites" either in MyAOL or AOL Desktop.
Was on LiveHelp w/ Edwin the other evening and he sent me an e-mail w/ directions on how to do this import, which pretty closely matched yours, Laura. So I'm still stuck w/ none of my old favs. And I must second the question, "Why can we not just import them like we used to in earlier upgrades of the AOL software?" Even my PFC folder that ended up on my desktop has hardly anything in it!
Pls help!!!!!
Signed,
REALLY Frustrated
Posted at 7:07PM on Apr 27th 2008 by JUDYTANK2
20. Several times the set up wizard would give me unable to import. I tried going to the my.aol.com but didn't see the above mentioned example. However after several attempts at using the set up wizard the last time being after going to my.aol.com they are showing. I click Favorites, then a side window opens under my screen name Favorite Places is a Folder Imported on with the date and time. There are all my favorites I had so many before I only saw the ones from Internet Explorer. Now I have them all I especially wanted the ones from AOL I have so many since I have used AOL for quite some time.
Posted at 6:33PM on Apr 28th 2008 by Truresa3