When you import the Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 bookmarks file to a system running Internet Explorer 7 or earlier, the following error occurs when you click Finish in the Import/Export Wizard.

Not a valid bookmark file

I could fully reproduce the problem in my Windows XP SP3 system running Internet Explorer 7. The source computer runs Windows Vista with Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 installed. Thinking that this could be due to incorrect formatting or missing tags in the HTML file, I opened the file using Notepad but couldn’t find any errors in it. Eventually I spotted that this issue is caused by incorrect encoding used by Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 to create/write to bookmark.htm. With that said, the fix is very simple.

To resolve the problem, save the bookmarks file as ANSI text. To do so, use the following steps:

Start Notepad, and then open the bookmarks file (bookmark.htm)

Click Save As on the File menu.

In the Save As dialog box, click ANSI in the Encoding list, and then click Save.

Click Yes when prompted to overwrite the file.

You should be able to import the bookmark file successfully using the Import/Export Wizard in Internet Explorer.


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44 Comments

  1. TedUjam
    said this on Wednesday, January 25th 2012 6:35 am

    Thanks, that has been bugging me for weeks

  2. David
    said this on Monday, December 5th 2011 8:35 am

    Awesome, thanks!!

  3. Simon
    said this on Thursday, November 24th 2011 6:10 pm

    Thank you for saving me so much frustration.

  4. Sachin
    said this on Monday, September 19th 2011 3:04 pm

    Thanks for the simplest solution for such an irritating problem. I tried it from IE9 to IE7.

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