How to Change the Location of Internet Explorer Favorites

Most of the times we like a page we “Favorite” it in IE. We don’t really bother about it until we need to backup it before a format. Well in case we forget to take the backup or don’t know about the location of the “Favorites”, all of them are lost. But we could simply assign the “Favorites” to a folder located in a Windows free partition in our hard disk. By doing this the favorites won’t get lost due to a format or even a Windows crash. Follow the simple tweak to get the job done.

Follow the steps below:

  • I have my Windows installed on my C: & that’s why I’ll be using my E: to create a new folder named Favorites. You do the same in a drive in which windows is not installed.
  • Go to START, then click RUN. Type regedit & hit enter. The Registry Editor will open.
  • In the left pane of the Registry Editor follow the path as shown below : Regedit directory
  • Now in the right hand panel of the Registry Editor window, Find the string name Favorites and double click on it. Change the location of IE Favorites to the new location which is the new folder you created in the first step i.e E:\Favorites(in my case) & then click OK.Edit string
  • Now again, in the left pane follow the path as shown below :Regedit directory 2
  • Again in the right panel find the Favorites string & double-click on it. As in the previous case edit location to E:\Favorites. And click OK.

NB :

  1. Don’t forget to copy the old Favorites from C:\Documents and Settings\your_name\Favorites to the newly assigned folders.
  2. Don’t forget to repeat this tweak (avoid 1st step) after you re-install Windows after a format.
  3. Well in case, you need to format E: don’t forget to take the backup of Favorites located in it.

So that’s it we are done. Now whenever you favorite a page in IE it will be saved in E:\Favorites & the hassle of losing it, is over.

Written by on Friday, June 19th, 2009          

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  • Stuart Bennett

    or if in vista or windows 7 browse to where your favourites folder is, right click the favourites folder and select properties, from there go to the location tab and click the move button, now go wherever you created your favourites folder in your non windows partition and click the select folder button, then click apply, then click ok. say yes to the prompt to migrate the favourites from the original location to the new ones and viola. same effect but atleast this way you aren’t encouraging users to play about with the registry.

    • http://www.ampercent.com Soumen Halder

      @Stuart Thanks for sharing. Readers will definitely be benefited.

  • Stuart Bennett

    im glad i could help.

  • Pope

    If I right click the favorites folder on a Win7 64Bit OS, I do not have a ‘location’-tab.