Exporting and importing Safari bookmarks
About this article
This article provides instructions for exporting and importing your Apple Safari bookmarks. It is intended for WSU students and employees in the eWarrior Digital Life and Learning Program who are scheduled to exchange their laptops in summer 2014. The names of the folders and the volume name of the drive used in the instructions correspond to those used on the laptops involved in the exchange. However, the same basic steps still apply to personally-owned computers.
Why export your Safari bookmarks?
Safari allows you to bookmark any website you visit, saving that site's unique address or URL to a personalized list. Later, instead of searching for the site or entering its address manually, you can simply select it from your bookmark list. You can manage your bookmark list by renaming links, organizing them into folders, and deleting them. Building a list of bookmarks is a great way to create a personal learning environment, customized to meet your needs. If you put a lot of time into it, you don't want to lose it. Safari saves your bookmark list locally on your device's hard drive. If something happens to your hard drive or you move to a new device, you don't want to have to build your bookmarks list again from scratch. You need to know how to save or export your list and copy or import it to another device.
Exporting
- Open Safari
- Select the File menu and select Export Bookmarks (Fig. 1)
- Enter a file name if you want to name the file something other than Safari Bookmarks. Choose a save location if you want to store the file someplace other than your Documents folder
- Select Save
Importing
- Open Safari
- Select the File menu and select Import Forms
- Choose the Bookmarks HTML File option and select your saved (i.e. exported) bookmarks file from where you stored it.