ot.fAVOURITES

Firefox - Bookmarks - Import & backup - backup IE8 - File - Import & export - export to a file

And for Firefox you can save your backup in 2 formats - I did both as it was nice to have an HTML listing I could print out in case I needed to share a website with somebody.

As someone who had a hard drive crash - I put both the html and the json files onto a thumb drive so they're someplace other than just the PC itself.

MelissaD

Thanks everyone for the info. I knew it was absolutely simple, but since I haven`t needed to do it for about four years I just couldn`t dredge it out of my poor old brain!

I`m in the process of saving absolutely everything I want to keep on an external hard drive. The computer`s behaving a bit better today, but for some reason links won`t work unless I copy and paste them. Grrrr!

Pat

There are no reasons (good ones anyway) for Ahole. One can store most of ones files on places like gmail without slowing your computers performance down to a snails pace by allowing Ahole to decide what it will allow you to do and where you can go.

HI Pat - it is easy. In Internet Explorer - click on File and then Export. Select Export Favourites and save to your hard drive. You then backup your hard drive .Once you have reloaded your computer you simply go to Internet Explorer and again click on File and then Import the file you exported. I do this about every 3 months as my needs/requirements change and yes, the favourites list gets very long. Enjoy

Thanks for the help, everyone - I knew it was something very simple - but I don`t use it often enough to remember it! (Could be an age thing, of course!) I`ve saved it to my external hard drive, together with everything else I don`t want to lose. Of course the computer`s working OK now, after a couple of days tweaking things. Time it had a good clean and reformat though, when I can face the hassle of it!

Pat

That you know of - here's just a bit from wiki of the sort of tricks you allow a system to do between you and the internet, and worse yet, pay for it !

Long ago I realized that a friend at ahole never received any email from me that contained 'language' - though whose definition it was remained unclear. Additionally when I send emails out to the bridge club, ahole will dump them because they are 'spam' - really I thought spam was unwanted mail. Anyway, here's a sample.

[edit] Community leaders Prior to mid 2005, AOL used volunteers called Community Leaders, or CLs, to monitor chatrooms, message boards, and libraries. Some community leaders were recruited for content design and maintenance using a proprietary language and interface called RAINMAN, although most content maintenance was performed by partner and internal employees.

In 1999, a class action lawsuit was filed against AOL citing violations of U.S. labor laws in its usage of CLs. The Department of Labor investigated but came to no conclusions, closing their investigation in 2001. In light of these events, AOL began drastically reducing the responsibilities and privileges of its volunteers in

2000. The program was eventually ended on June 8 2005. Current Community Leaders at the time were offered 12 months of credit on their accounts.

AOL's use of remote volunteers dated back to the establishment of its Quantum Link service in 1985.

[edit] Billing disputes AOL has faced a number of lawsuits over claims that it has been slow to stop billing customers after their accounts have been canceled, either by the company or the user. In addition, AOL changed its method of calculating used minutes in response to a class action lawsuit. Previously, AOL would add fifteen seconds to the time a user was connected to the service and round up to the next whole minute (thus, a person who used the service for 11 minutes and 46 seconds would be charged for 13 minutes). AOL claimed this was to account for sign on/sign off time, but because this practice was not made known to its customers, the plaintiffs won (some also pointed out that signing on and off did not always take 15 seconds, especially when connecting via another ISP). AOL disclosed its connection-time calculation methods to all of its customers and credited them with extra free hours. In addition, the AOL software would notify the user of exactly how long they were connected and how many minutes they were being charged.

AOL was sued by the Ohio Attorney General in October 2003 for improper billing practices. The case was settled on June 8, 2005. AOL agreed to resolve any consumer complaints filed with the Ohio AG's office. In December 2006, AOL agreed to provide restitution to Florida consumers to settle the case filed against them by the Florida Attorney General.[32]

[edit] Account cancellation In response to approximately 300 consumer complaints, then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer?s office began an inquiry of AOL?s customer service policies. The investigation revealed that the company had an elaborate scheme for rewarding employees who purported to retain or "save" subscribers who had called to cancel their Internet service. In many instances, such retention was done against subscribers? wishes, or without their consent. Under the scheme, consumer service personnel received bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars if they could successfully dissuade or "save" half of the people who called to cancel service. For several years, AOL had instituted minimum retention or "save" percentages, which consumer representatives were expected to meet. These bonuses, and the minimum "save" rates accompanying them, had the effect of employees not honoring cancellations, or otherwise making cancellation unduly difficult for consumers.

Many customers complained that AOL personnel ignored their demands to cancel service and stop billing. On August 24 2005, America Online agreed to pay $1.25 million to the state of New York and reformed its customer service procedures. Under the agreement, AOL would no longer require its customer service representatives to meet a minimum quota for customer retention in order to receive a bonus.[33]

On June 13 2006, a man named Vincent Ferrari documented his account cancellation phone call in a blog post, stating he had switched to broadband years earlier. In the recorded phone call, the AOL representative refused to cancel the account unless the 30-year-old Ferrari explained why AOL hours were still being recorded on it. Ferrari insisted that AOL software was not even installed on the computer. When Ferrari demanded that the account be canceled regardless, the AOL representative asked to speak with Ferrari's father, for whom the account had been set up. The conversation was aired on CNBC. When CNBC reporters tried to have an account on AOL cancelled, they were hung up on immediately and it ultimately took more than 45 minutes to cancel the account.[34]

On July 18, 2006, AOL was rated #4 in an article entitled, "10 Worst Computer Gimmicks of Recent Times." [2][35]

On July 19 2006, AOL's entire retention manual was released on the Internet.[36] (7MB PDF).

On August 3 2006, Time Warner announced that the company would be dissolving AOL's retention centers due to its profits hinging on $1 billion in cost cuts. The company estimated that it would lose more than six million subscribers over the following year.[37]