423216 - Bookmarks import from IE7 failed to completely transfer all bookmarks.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect, P2)

Description

[Larry]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2008030714 Firefox/3.0b4

Import failed to completely transfer my large collection of bookmarks from the IE7 "Favorites". Eleven of my folders, with many files, were never imported, but no damage was detected. I tried to import again, but it did not show recognition  of the other folders or files, let alone import them. Regards, Larry

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Left click on "Bookmarks".
2.Left click on "Show all Bookmarks".
3.Left click on "Import and backup".
4.Left clicked on "All Bookmarks" on far left of dialog box.
5.Left clicked on "Bookmarks Menu" in the sub-folder.
6.Left click on "Import and backup" and "Import" from sub-menu.
7.It download about half my bookmarks, automatically. 
8.I repeated the procedure and it added the same folders and files again in a new folder titled same as the first import was: "From Internet Explorer".
9.I deleted it without a detecting any new problem.
Actual Results:  
It left me without access to all of my IE7 "Favorites" bookmarks using your "Bookmarks" button. I use them a lot and must have remedy. 

Expected Results:  
A complete transfer of all of my bookmarks was expected. I did not expect a "crash" and I am happy I did not have one. 

N/A

Comment 1

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

I wonder if this is specific to IE7. Can someone test import from IE6?

Comment 2

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Tony, I'm guessing you guys do IE6 and IE7 migration testing. If you can confirm this, please do so and re-nominate.

Comment 3

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

I tested this on Vista using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008050206 Minefield/3.0pre. Although I may have not had as many bookmarks as the reporter, all of the various bookmarks I added in the various new folders I created were imported into Firefox. I will test with XP as well.

Comment 4

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

Bulk closing all UNCONFIRMED bugs dealing with places that haven't had any bug activity in over 120 days, have no votes, and are not enhancement requests.

If you are still experiencing this issue in Firefox 3.0 or later, please re-open the bug with steps to reproduce (if they were not part of the original comment).

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv

Comment 6

[Don Pellegrino]

I also see this behavior when attempting to import IE 10 Favorites into Firefox Bookmarks. To reproduce this issue the steps described in the documentation at http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-bookmarks-internet-explorer were followed. Although many folders are not imported, the "Import Wizard" dialog reports "Import Complete" with the text that "The following items were successfully imported: Internet Options, Cookies, Browsing History, and Favorites." I will have to do further analysis on the import set to see if a particular favorite file is causing this failure.

It may be useful to decompose this bug into two separate bugs, one for detecting the failure and reporting it to the user, and another for handing the problematic record. Reporting "Import Complete" may lead to loss of user data if the user were to subsequently delete the IE favorites without realizing that they were not fully imported. The import process may benefit from some sort of validity check. A candidate implementation might compare the count of bookmarks created with the count of files in the Favorites folder.

Test System: Mozilla Firefox 15.0.1; (User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/15.0.1); Microsoft Windows 8 Enterprise 64-bit; Microsoft Internet Explorer 10.0.9200.16384;

Comment 7

[Don Pellegrino]

I found that the import process stopped prematurely without error or warning when it encountered Favorite files having values for the "Prop21-31," field. This is the description field in a Microsoft Favorite file. The field is documented by Microsoft at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2568750. The desired behavior is that the description value in the Microsoft Favorite file import into the Description field in Firefox. Removing the files with description values from the Favorites folder on Windows and rerunning the Firefox import process did work.

Comment 8

[Don Pellegrino]

Attachment: Example Microsoft Favorite file containing a description value.

Placing a Microsoft Favorite file (.url) within the Favorites folder will cause Firefox to stop importing favorites when it encounters the file.

Comment 9

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Thanks for the example file, though your report is higly unlikely due to the same cause as the original report, so please file a new bug, describe your issue and attach the example file there, then we can proceed with a fix.