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Alphabetise Firefox's Bookmarks
Posted by Gina Trapani at 7:40 AM on May 14, 2008
When Firefox's bookmarks are a scattered mess of links, you can restore order instantaneously by alphabetising them. Simply reordering the column in the Bookmarks Manager won't do it though—you've got to invoke the context menu. Macworld explains:
Select a folder full of bookmarks in the left pane of the Bookmarks Manager window. The right pane will fill with that folder's contents. If you want to sort all the items in the right pane by name, just Control-click (Ed: Windows users, right-click) on an item in the right pane and choose Sort By Name from the contextual menu. Firefox will first organise folders alphabetically, and then follow those folders with alphabetised items that carry URLs.If you're a heavy bookmarks user, your newly alphabetised list will be a lot easier to navigate.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
JerryA
Posted 1:09 AM 14/5/08
Sorry, but hasn't "Sort by name" been an option for a long time now? I do it at least every month or 2 as I add new bookmarks.
JerryA
edicius
Posted 1:33 AM 14/5/08
Must be a slow news day at Macworld. I've known about this ever since I started using Firefox. I figured everyone did.
But what I'd really like is the ability to select all and then sort by name (including subfolders). I can select all in the bookmark manager, but it won't allow me to sort.
edicius
eejit
Posted 1:23 AM 14/5/08
Argh, I really dislike that option. Every time I've hit that option by mistake (I think FF 1.x had it top of the right-click list) I have to start hunting for my bookmarks and subfolders. I remember them by position, then fine-tune by name.
eejit
robmcbell
Posted 1:17 AM 14/5/08
the option is "grayed out" for me. ¿por qué?
robmcbell
upnishad
Posted 1:17 AM 14/5/08
yes I think 'Sort By Name' was always there...
upnishad
Aanidaani
Posted 1:44 AM 14/5/08
I used this on 4000 bookmarks. FF froze for 10 mins, but sorted them all.
Aanidaani
freddybob
Posted 1:44 AM 14/5/08
you can also right-click in the Bookmarks menu
freddybob
stinkyboy
Posted 1:39 AM 14/5/08
.... duhh
stinkyboy
FubarGuy
Posted 2:17 AM 14/5/08
@eejit: Same here, I've never organized Bookmarks alphabetically. I think it would hurt my brain to try! Good tip though.
FubarGuy
thelurker
Posted 2:13 AM 14/5/08
Actually, I think it's worth pointing out. It took me ages to realise how to sort bookmarks and right-clicking in the menu still seems counter-intuitive for new users. Firefox's bookmark system is way behind Opera's.
thelurker
Rich Bradshaw
Posted 2:46 AM 14/5/08
Isn't this the most obvious post ever?
Rich Bradshaw
ultrasur1
Posted 3:18 AM 14/5/08
for some people this might not be so obvious. relax.
i could never alphabetize my bookmarks. it would leave me completely disorganized if that makes sense.
ultrasur1
gfrobe
Posted 3:35 AM 14/5/08
I know how to alphabetize the contents of folders but how do I alphabetize the folders themselves? I've got lots of folders in my bookmarks menu and can't figure out how to sort them automatically.
gfrobe
Runeshai
Posted 6:15 AM 14/5/08
That's a sweet little tip, I especially like how it reorders items with folders at the top of the list. It's a nice logical touch that saves lots of time :P.
Runeshai
mljones1947
Posted 6:51 AM 14/5/08
@gfrobe: There is a Bookmark Sync and Sort extension that has been available for ages. I know that everyone is on love with Foxmarks, but you can just use the sorting feature.
mljones1947
Karyn
Posted 9:15 AM 14/5/08
Thank you, Gina!
Some commenters: Just because YOU have always known how to do this--or anything else posted here--doesn't mean everyone knows it.
Didn't we all learn what we now know from somewhere, whether we discovered it ourselves or someone said one day, "Hey, look at this!"?
::eyeroll::
Karyn
thewildboo
Posted 11:24 AM 14/5/08
Count me as one that didn't know about this. It looks so much neater now!
thewildboo
AcidReign
Posted 10:58 AM 15/5/08
I had stumbled on this a while back, but it's still a good tip! It worked on the Windows start menu, so I tried it on Firefox.
Another nice thing undocumented thing you can do with Firefox is control-Z. (Undo!) It's great when you accidentally delete the contents of a blog-post text box, after you've typed up a huge manifesto!
AcidReign