Importing old Brave Bookmarks

I recently had my laptop wiped and re installed W10 as W11 kept crashing my laptop.
I reinstaled Brave yet cannot find my bookmarks? The install option only gives me an option to improt from Chrome or Edge but not “old Brave”
Is all my data gone now>
I have installed the latst version of Brave

@KeeperG

Without your previously taking time to make a backup of your Brave Browser data, your bookmarks are ‘gone’.

Making a backup - means, creating a backup of the BraveSoftware folder in the path at (depending upon your desktop computer OS):

Linux OS:

  • $HOME/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/

Mac OS:

  • /Users/username/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/

Windows OS:

  • C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\

The folder of great importance, is the Brave-Browser folder. My opinion is, that the PARENT FOLDER is therefore, the folder to back up. (Skipping, here, the details re WHY the PARENT FOLDER.)

In addition to such a backup, you can use the Brave Browser > Bookmarks Manager to EXPORT your Brave Browser bookmarks.

When you select the ‘hamburger menu’, the ‘three horizontal bars’ icon, in the upper-right area of the Brave Browser window (looks like):

newmenuicon.png

Click on that ‘hamburger menu’ button and then scroll down to ‘Bookmarks’, and a menu should pop-out to the side.

In that pop-out menu, select ‘Bookmarks Manager’.

An alternative approach, is, to open a Brave Browser > New Window and enter: brave://bookmarks/

In the upper-right area of the Bookmarks Manager window, you will see either a vertical-oriented or a horizontally-oriented THREE DOT button.

That is a ‘kabob menu’ button. For Bookmarks Manager purposes, Brave calls that an ‘Organize’ menu button.

When you click on that THREE DOT button, you should see a pop-down menu similar to:

Bookmarks_Manager_organize_menu

In that menu, you would select ‘Export bookmarks’

Bookmarks and Bookmarks.bak files:

Linux OS:

  • $HOME/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Bookmarks
  • $HOME/.config/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Bookmarks.bak

Mac OS:

  • $HOME/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Bookmarks
  • $HOME/Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Bookmarks.bak

Windows OS

  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Bookmarks
  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default\Bookmarks.bak

Helps to know:

Your initial, user Profile, is named ‘Profile 1’ and the substance of ‘Profile 1’ is in the folder named Default.

Your first, additionally-created Profile, will be named ‘Profile 2’ and is in a folder named Profile 1.

YOU have to keep track of the relationship between the user ‘Profile’ names and their corresponding Profile folder-names.

Table: user Profile - Profile folder
user Profile named ‘Profile 1’ - folder named Default
user Profile named ‘Profile 2’ - folder named Profile 1
user Profile named ‘Profile 3’ - folder named Profile 2

You might change the name of user named ‘Profile 3’ to ‘TEST PROFILE’ - in which case the following will exist, be true:

user Profile named ‘TEST PROFILE’ - folder is still named Profile 2

Backup Software and Tips

Some of the backup software, has the ability to schedule backups, and you might want to use that scheduling.

Include date and time in the backup filename. For example:

  • 20220629-1627_BraveSoftware_fldr_bkup.zip

  • BraveSoftware_fldr_bkup_20220629-1627.zip

I strongly recommend that backups be stored on an attached, external hard drive.

OK to also locate backups on your computer - as long as the backups are OUTSIDE of the path of the Brave Browser installation. You might create a new directory on your computer, for such storage (Windows OS example):

  • C:\Important_Backups\

Windows OS users:

Create a new System Restore Point every day or week, depending upon the importance of recent work.

IF Windows OS computer NOT ‘wiped’, then maybe:

Thank you.Learnt a hard lesson😐

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@KeeperG

In my previous reply, I added more info, to help you get oriented.

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