Happy about the release of the Vivaldi Browser Technical Preview of course i have been playing around a bit and quickly came to the point where i wanted to import my bookmarks from Opera 2x which i am currently using but quickly found that this might not be as easy as i hoped. Now Vivaldi comes with import options for multiple browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera 12.x and the classic html file) but there is no option for that “new” Opera 15.x and higher.
Checking Opera for an export Option quickly showed there was nothing like that there. Now the comments on their website to the latest release of course show many references to Vivaldi and confirmed that a) there was no export option and b) they have no interest in offering one anytime soon. Their developer thorbenb states “Well, I guess you all see that economically it kinda makes no sense for a browser to offer a bookmarks export option” which i can understand from their point of view. Yes there might be reasons why they should but i can understand why they won´t. I don´t have to like it though.
So with that way barred i could start looking into extensions that might have that functionality. However i just considered that Opera being based on Chrome now could still be using that bookmarks format the Google browser is using. A quick check confirmed that and this leads to the point that Chrome actually does have an “export to html file” option in its bookmark manager.
I quickly installed Chrome, copied the Opera 28 bookmarks file into the chrome folder, went to the bookmark manager, exported them into an html file and imported that into Vivaldi. That did it for me. I will give you a more detailed description below for Windows at least. Now i got my bookmarks back. I can´t say anything about speed dials though … never used them … never cared to be honest. Important for me was that folders, bookmark names and urls made it over. Date of creation was also transferred.
So here is the more detailed description how to bring them over using Chrome:
(this example is based on Windows 7)
1. Install Chrome
Just go and download the Chrome browser and install it
2. find your Opera bookmark file
By default the bookmarks are stored in file with the name “bookmarks”. Note that it actually has no filename extension. It can be found in your user profile inside of a folder thats by default hidden from the user. Assuming c: is your system driver then its inside c:usersappdataroamingopera
(note that appdata is by default a hidden folder so you can either enter that in the adressbar or configure the explorer to show hidden files and folders to browse there) A very convenient way to get there is by press Win+R on your keyboard and just enter “%appdata%” without the quotes in the prompt and execute that.
Now just copy that file.
3. copy your bookmarks into Chrome
First make sure the Chrome browser is currently closed. While Chrome is by default also using the appdata section of your profile to store the bookmarks it doesn´t use “roaming” path but instead the section “local”.
To get there quickly you can again use the “%appdata%” trick and just go one folder up and then into the “local” folder. From there enter the following folders: “googlechromeuserdatadefault”. Now paste the bookmarks file into this folder. Depending on whether Chrome also created one you might be asked to overwrite the current one. (obviously dont do that if you use Chrome as a regular browsers and have other booksmarks stored in it)
4. Export your bookmarks into .html file
Now you can start Chrome and enter the bookmarks manager. You should see all your Opera bookmarks and folders. Look for the “Organize” button and click on it. There will be an option to export your bookmarks to an html file. Do that and save your bookmarks.
5. Import your bookmarks into Vivaldi
Now start Vivaldi. Go into the “File” menu (just click the V button in the upper left corner) and choose “Import data“. In the following dialog choose “bookmarks html file” in the from field, click on “Import” and select the html file you stored in step 4.
Thats it … your bookmarks should now all be inside the bookmarks manager of Vivaldi. They are put into a subfolder “Imported” so you might need to move the m around a bit using drag&drop but we are done
