The Favorites menu in Internet Explorer lets you arrange the shortcuts by dragging each shortcut to your preferred location within the Favorites menu. If you use the Import/Export Wizard in Internet Explorer or manually copy the URL favorites to another system, the favorites order is not copied to the target system. This is because Internet Explorer stores the sort order in the registry, and the Import/Export Wizard does not reference the sort order registry key.

In order to have the custom favorites order applied to another computer, export the following registry key from the source computer:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ MenuOrder \ Favorites

1. Launch Regedit.exe and navigate to the above branch

2. From the File menu, choose Export

3. Save the branch to a REG file (for example: favsort.reg).

4. Transfer this REG file to the target computer.

5. In the target computer, delete the branch:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ MenuOrder \ Favorites

6. Then double-click the REG file (favsort.reg) in the target system to run it.

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3 Comments

  1. Sean
    said this on Friday, August 13th 2010 11:58 am

    thankyouthankyouthankyou very much for this. I have over a thousand favorites and this helped me more than you can know.

  2. Robert
    said this on Friday, October 9th 2009 7:23 pm

    Ramesh–

    I’ve successfully loaded my favorites–in order–from one PC to another. My new PC is running IE8 on Vista Home Premium. My favorites order is being reset to alphabetical order several times a week. I’m guessing it happens following a windows update. What can I do, short of saving the registry section and reloading it every time? I’d hate to have to start numbering my favorties item in each folder.

    I LOVE your blog–lots of great stuff!!

  3. Deyaa Addeen Fahmy Shedeed
    said this on Tuesday, August 19th 2008 8:00 am

    thank you very much, It’s new.

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