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. Kathi
    said this on Thursday, March 31st 2011 6:37 am

    OH YES – Fantastic!!!

  2. Romarob
    said this on Monday, March 14th 2011 12:40 am

    Thanks so much for the solution. Was pulling my hair out till I found this. Thanks again!

  3. HP
    said this on Tuesday, January 18th 2011 11:22 am

    Superb Solution…!!! Many Thanks…

  4. michael Fein
    said this on Sunday, January 2nd 2011 12:27 pm

    you are the man! thanks for posting this solution to the importing favorites problem to those of use with XP.

  5. AKS
    said this on Tuesday, November 30th 2010 7:43 pm

    Excellent, it worked, thanks.
    I was facing this problem while importing a bookmark file on my laptop having IE 7. The bookmark file was created some times back from my Office PC (although I don’t remember the IE version over there).

  6. yo
    said this on Saturday, November 20th 2010 10:21 pm

    Perfect!

  7. said this on Saturday, November 20th 2010 12:31 am

    NOICE! Saved a user his Favorites.

  8. toni
    said this on Thursday, September 2nd 2010 12:54 am

    Great solv for this problem ! Thx a loooot !

  9. Joanne
    said this on Monday, August 30th 2010 8:48 pm

    This worked perfectly…many thanks for your help!
    Jo

  10. Jon
    said this on Sunday, August 15th 2010 2:34 am

    Thank you so much for this tip…worked like a charm!!!

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