[HOWTO] - Sync your IE 5 Favorites in OS 9 and OS X

Y

yoshi

Registered
Okay after lots of pissed off moments where I needed a bookmark I made in IE 5 in OS 9 and I was in OS X I finally did the hack that should help everyone. I am listing detailed instructions on how to have the same Favorites, Histories, and Toolbar links in OS 9 and in OS X. Note I used IE 5.1.3 on Both OS 9 and OS X so if you haven't upgraded to 5.1 in OS 9 I cannot guarantee this will work for you completely. So here are the instructions.

1) Go into your preferences folder in your OS 9 System Folder.

2) Look for the folder named "explorer" (without quotes)

3) Make an alias of the following files:
History.html
Favorites.html
Downloads.html
Toolbar.xml

4) Move these files to the desktop and close all the windows to make room.

5) Double click your Hard Drive with OS X on it and in the upper toolbar click on the "home" button (without quotes)

6) Go into the Library Folder and then into Preferences

7) Look for the folder "explorer" (without quotes)

8) Delete the following files:
History.html
Favorites.html
Downloads.html
Toolbar.English.xml

9) Remember the alias's we moved to the desktop? Well move those into this folder and make sure to remove the word "Alias" from them.

10) Rename the file Toolbar.xml to Toolbar.English.xml After that close all the windows and start up IE.

You should now have the same favorites, downloads in your download manager, same toolbar favorites, and same history. This will change with use from either IE 5.1 in OS 9 or OS X. If you have any questions please ask. Like I said at the beginning I used IE 5.1.3 in both OS 9 and OS X and I don't know if this will work with 5.0 so upgrade as its free and if you can run 5.0 on your mac you can run 5.1.

Hope this helps some people

`Dave
 
Yea, I use the similar method to sync. my ICQ pref. and it just works fine!

:D
 
Just a bit of warning about using an alias for IE bookmarks. Apparently, OS X doesn't like using an alias to share with OS 9. I recently lost all of my bookmarks (in both OS 9 and OS X) because of this setup. (And I've heard of others with this problem.)

As always, your mileage may vary.
 
I have been using this config for a few weeks now with no issues.. maybe you did it wrong although I don't see how..

`Dave
 
I did the inverse of this (put the X bookmarks into 9) and I notice that IE doesn't keep the cookies anymore. Anybody else have this problem?
 
Originally posted by jca
Just a bit of warning about using an alias for IE bookmarks. Apparently, OS X doesn't like using an alias to share with OS 9. I recently lost all of my bookmarks (in both OS 9 and OS X) because of this setup. (And I've heard of others with this problem.)

As always, your mileage may vary.
Click to expand...


Are you using a seperate partition or hard drive for this?

`Dave
 
No, I'm not using a separate partition. And to the other poster, no I'm not "doing it wrong". I've seen this problem/gotcha mentioned in other forums.

It worked for me without any problems for a while, and then the bookmarks were wiped. This cannot be traced to any other factors. I've seen this same outcome mentioned in other forums.

Regardless, make a backup of your bookmarks/files/etc. :)
 
Originally posted by jca
No, I'm not using a separate partition. And to the other poster, no I'm not "doing it wrong". I've seen this problem/gotcha mentioned in other forums.

It worked for me without any problems for a while, and then the bookmarks were wiped. This cannot be traced to any other factors. I've seen this same outcome mentioned in other forums.

Regardless, make a backup of your bookmarks/files/etc. :)
Click to expand...
Okay coupled with the above posts the only other logical question is did you update after you did this hack because I still have my favorites. I don't know but I do notice that X is picky about sym links between drives but not on the same drive. Ah well I will experiment more on my iBookX.

`Yoshi
 
Yoshi,

I'm new to the forum, AND OS X, but thought I'd post this question:

Have you tried duplicating the files, and putting them in the OS X prefs, instead of the aliases?

Of course, if things are already working...:)
 
well that would work but thats even more of a pain, the reason I did it like this is so that if you ever have to boot into OS 9 you have all your stuff right there and you don't have to worry about having to find your bookmarks and stuff :)
 
Great idea Yoshi...

I do something completely different though. I actually opened word and pasted all my fave's into a doc and named it user.html (user=my name) and then copied it into my documents folder on both systems. I have not tried it with an alias but I like the idea of portability it gives me. If I want to take my links to the office I can just email em'.

I actually coded it in html with "a href" 's to clean it up and make it look pretty. The nice thing about it is I can make tables and all sorts of visual aids to draw my eyes to things.

Just my 2 cents!
 
I did a similar thing to get bookmaks to work in 9 and X.

Seeing as X is my main system i created alias to the bookmake files and placed them in the corresponding 9 Prefs folder. (i did this wile using OS 9 because 9 doesn't like OSX aliases.

Never had any problems worked fine for me for about a year now
 
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