Backing Up Essential Personal Data

By Aysë Stenabaugh

Most people recognize the importance of backing up important data like Pictures, documents, videos etc. Imagine that you confidently restore all of your data only to find that your bookmarks, saved passwords, address book and emails are all gone? Read on to find out what additional data you might want to manually preserve for later.

Web Browser Bookmarks/Favorites – If you’re like me, you’ve created a slew of folders and bookmarks within your browser to help you find specific website pages for later. If you’re using Internet explorer your bookmarks are stored in a folder called “Favorites” in your User folder. To navigate to this folder you would go to your file explorer, then to your C: drive, users and finally your Favorites folder. Other web browsers store their bookmarks within your AppData folder which is hidden by default (for a good reason) and we won’t recommend accessing that folder to backup your bookmarks, you can do so more safely from within the browser itself.

• Google Chrome users can export their bookmarks by opening the browser and either by pressing Control+Shift+0, typing chrome://bookmarks in the address bar or, by clicking on the three dots located at the top right of the screen (just below the X to close the program). Placing your mouse over the “Bookmarks” option will produce a flyout menu where you can then select “Bookmark Manager”. From here, on the page itself click the 3 dots in the top right (not the 3 dots you clicked previously) and choose export bookmarks. This will open a save dialog box where you can choose where to save a copy of your bookmarks.
• Firefox users can export their bookmarks by opening the browser and either by pressing Control+Shift+B, or by clicking the bookcase icon in the top right of the screen (just below the minimize button). Then click on “bookmarks” and then “show all bookmarks” at the bottom of that menu. A window labeled “library” will open and you can then click on “import and backup”. Here you have the option for both backup and export bookmarks to HTML” Choosing backup will give you the option to save a JSON file which includes all of your Firefox data including settings, bookmarks and passwords. Choosing “export bookmarks to HTML” will allow you to save just a backup of your bookmarks. Having a separate copy of your bookmarks is a good idea, in the event that your Firefox data is damaged or corrupt, you could still access your saved bookmarks.
• Microsoft Edge users who are logged into a Microsoft Account on their PC will not have to manually backup data since it is saved to your account. If you aren’t using a Microsoft account or if you want to be absolutely sure this data is stored however, you can manually save a copy of your bookmarks. First open Edge and click on the three horizontal dots in the top right corner (just below the x). In the menu that appears, click on settings, then click on “import favorites and other info”. Here you will actually find the export to file option as well. Clicking on this will give you the option to save a copy of your bookmarks in an HTML format.

Web Browser Passwords – I can’t tell you how many of our customers are lost without their saved passwords. Just picture yourself having to reset every single password you forgot because your saved passwords are gone. Now I’ve got your attention! No one wants to go through that, and you don’t have to if you sync your web browser data to an account your password data can be retrieved by logging back into that account, just make sure you don’t forget that password, or at least that you provide some kind of recovery option (such as a phone number or secondary email address) just in case you do forget it.

• Google Chrome users if you have a Google or Gmail account then you are halfway to password freedom! Just open your web browser and locate the “person” icon in the top right corner just to he left of the 3 vertical dots. Once here, you are able to sign in to your Google account and choose what data you would like to sync automatically. Once your passwords are synced you can login to any Google Chrome application to access your saved data or you can visit passwords.google.com from any web browser to sign in and access manage your saved passwords.
• Firefox users can utilized “Firefox sync” by following similar steps as Google users by clicking the “person” icon to the left of the three vertical lines in the top right corner of the browser.
• Edge users who are logged into Microsoft accounts can sync data across devices when syncing is enabled. To access or change these settings open Edge and click on the three horizontal dots and then click on settings. Scrolling down will reveal an option under Accounts called “device sync settings”. Going here will provide you with the power to choose what data is stored and what data syncs between devices.

Address Books – If you access you email by going to a website in a web browser, or by using the app that is specific to your email service (for example, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc) any contacts that you save or email will automatically be saved to your account and will be accessible any time you login. If you are using an application such as Outlook, Windows Live mail, or Thunderbird your address book will not be retained even if you are using an IMAP account. The steps to backup your address book can vary depending on the program you are using. Typically, once you are in your address book, you will see an option to export your address book somewhere within the same screen. If you don’t want to potentially re-create your address book you should determine the best method of saving a copy of that data manually.

Emails – Most people are using the IMAP protocol to access their email. IMAP simply means that any data that you are seeing on your device, is located on the server, and is not necessarily being stored on your device. If you are still using the POP protocol your email is being saved on your device and, unless settings are set to keep a copy of emails on the server, your emails will be lost if you don’t have them saved elsewhere. There are different methods of saving your emails for different programs, if you are concerned that you might loose your emails in the event your device crashes, you should determine the best option to retain that information.

If you have questions about the suggestions made above, or if you would like technical support you can contact us at Jester’s Computer Services at (717) 642-6611 or customerservice@jesterscomputers.com. Online we can be found at www.jesterscomputers.com and on Facebook