Under the Covers (and Across the Pond) with Yahoo! Bookmarks

Yahoo bookmarks for me became totally unusable after importing my firefox bookmarks. Every link on the page is empty (). I reported this twice via the feedback link (had to search around to find it because that link is blank too), but haven’t heard anything back. This obviously isn’t ready for real use.

Dave,

Sorry to hear that the import is not working for you. We are working to track down the problem now. If you have bookmarks that have javascript in them (e.g. bookmarklets etc), that may be the cause of the error. Regardless, we will get this fixed ASAP. Thanks for the heads up!

I’m using My Web, so I don’t have to import my bookmarks, they are already in Yahoo! Bookmarks Beta. But I have a problem when I try to edit a bookmark in Yahoo! Bookmarks: all fields (URL, description, …) are always empty, and even if I fill in again each field I can’t edit my boomarks in Yahoo! Bookmarks Beta, it doesn’t work correctly (I can still do it whithout any problem with My Web, which is anyway what I prefer and what I usually use).
Someone with another Yahoo! ID, on the same computer, doesn’t have this problem.

I sent feedback via the feedback link but right now the problem is still there.

are yahoo bookmarks and Delicious same service or different and if they are different are their any plans for integrating these services.

how do i add my blog http://blog2good.blogspot.com to yahoo bookmarks.plz tell me.

Dave, the bug you experienced happens if your import set has an unusually long URL. We’ve fixed the bug now and it should be pushed out in Monday’s build. Thank you for your input and your patience.

I’m not sure that this is the place to ask; but is there any chance that these new features will hit the firefox toolbar any time soon?

I am also interested in the product roadmap here. Can you explain how these three Yahoo! services relate to each other and what the plan for each of them is going forward:

* Yahoo! My Web 2.0
* Yahoo! Bookmarks
* Delicious

Bookmarks seems great, btw– love the screen captures.

just wanted to know wheather yahoo is also launching a new blog service like blogger.com.

Still the same problem for me today, every link on the page says href=”" so all links are useless.

Dave, the fix for your bug actually went out on Wednesday evening, instead of Monday as planned. Please try again to access your bookmarks.

Yes, it works now. Thanks.

The Beta of Yahoo! Bookmarks & Toolbar is Driving me Crazy!

I tried the new Beta Yahoo! Bookmarks by downloading the new beta toolbar and then switched back. I can still get to the old view http://bookmarks.yahoo.com/ and it says I have 998 of 1000 bookmarks. When the Beta view http://beta.bookmarks.yahoo.com/,… says I have 1015 bookmarks even though the faq still says 1000 is the limit? What is the limit – I hate that we only get 1000, I spend way too much time on maintanence and cleanup and making room for new bookmarks. I don’t want to lose my dead links because I can still get to cached versions on google or the wayback machine. And I hate that Yahoo! doesn’t have a way of finding duplicates or deadlinks for me. I just keep importing my Yahoo! bookmarks into IE and to htm.

With 1015 bookmarks why are so many of the bookmarks from the old view now missing from the beta view. One folder with 55 bookmarks now only has 18 in beta. My finance folder went from 40 to 8 – the first is annoying, this one is scary, I need those links – it’s how I pay my bills. Before I started, I exported my entire list to an htm file. After noticing the missing bookmarks. I tried to import from this file and also tried the “Import from Yahoo!” button provided. My bookmarks remain missing. But I just noticed now that I have this new folder in the Beta called ‘My Web Bookmarks’, which contains all the same folders/subfolders/bookmarks as the beta, including all the missing ones. I guess this is where the 1015 come from – I have a duplicate of everything – which I guess means the beta really only brought over 507 of my folders/bookmarks. Can I delete the entire list and reimport from Yahoo! or my htm file? Will this fix my problem?

Also, MyYahoo! homepage which used to have a module that listed all my bookmarks down the left side column, now has a message that states something like. “sorry, now that you’re using the beta, you can no longer see your bookmarks here. I’m not using the beta anymore I switched back immediately after losing all my bookmarks. Any chance of wiping out the traces that I tried either of these betas? I’m afraid that when Yahoo! switches us for real, my bookmarks will be gone. As it states that importing will only happen once, so if you switch back to the old and then add bookmarks in the old view, they won’t carry over to the new view. It says nothing about reimporting the entire list at a later time.

Any info? Thanks.

Hi emmarie – I received your detailed response, and send one back this morning. Please take a look and let me know what the result is from the actions I’ve recommended.

Thanks.
Gailene

I’d love to try the yahoo bookmarks but 1000 isn’t close to being enough. Too bad.

Hi Stephen – That limit does not exist anymore. Feel free to try it out!

Gailene

The new beta Yahoo bookmarks is very, very annoying. My original Yahoo bookmarks were the way I liked them, slimmed down, deleted folders. The new Yahoo bookmarks brought back old previously deleted folders and I cannot seem to delete the empty folders. There is an option on the site to delete individual bookmarks, but none to delete folders. Do you know how to fix this? I can’t seem to import my original bookmarks into IE and then from there download them to the new bookmarks page. I have IE 6.0.2800 and work will not allow me to download a newer version of IE. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. I am very much wishing i had never downloaded the new beta toolbar/bookmarks.

I use firefox and new Yahoo bookmarks beta drove me absolutely crazy. I used to be a devoted yahoo user but use it less and less. Bookmarks is the last one I believed the best but now yahoo can’t help but screwed it. I lost most of my frequent used bookmark during the import and repeated attempt to add them back to the folder failed. They are simple homepage of NY Times and Slate. No long addresses at all. Please help.

I’m a long time Yahoo bookmarks user, and it is one of the main reasons I stick with Yahoo. However, some bookmarks are now missing after I switched to the new Yahoo toolbar. Can I get them back, or are they just gone? Losing information is really, really frustrating.

Kristine — You can delete folders (and edit, merge, move, lots of other actions) by clicking on the folder name. Once you’re viewing this folder, you’ll see an “edit” option beside the folder name in the left-hand folder navigation.

Santi — you shouldn’t have lost any bookmarks in the move to the new system, but it’s possible items in your old ‘root’ folder are harder to find now. I’d recommend you move the items you user most frequently into the “frequently used” folder.

T — I’m not sure why you would have lost any bookmarks. Have you tried using the search function to find them? Again, I’d recommend moving frequently used bookmarks into the “frequently used” folder.

I, like the others above am a long time yahoo user, and do not like the new beta-bookmarks (just as i don’t like the new beta mail). It’s not that i am averse to change, but everytime yahoo ‘changes’, it seems to simply try to be like google, which google already does well. So instead of keeping me for the Y!Strengths, you’re repelling me towards Google! Probably not your intention. Bookmarks, the address book, and notepad are the only three things that keep me with Yahoo… you guys just mucked up one of the last three.

How can i go back to my old Yahoo bookmarks?!!

rfsi

rfsi — it’d be helpful if you could describe what exactly it is about the new bookmarks that you dislike so much? Please list all the old features you miss, which new ones bug you, and any details about the total experience you dislike.

There is currently no way to revert to the old bookmarks.

The features of the old bookmarks I liked was the ability to display the links on MyYahoo homepage. Please explain how I can replicate that feature with the new Beta.

Thanks

Hi, It’s taken a while to find this page.

I would like to echo comments made above about bookmarks going missing, though in a different way. I use the latest version of firefox and the yahoo toolbar on Win XP. I don’t use Firefox local bookmarks at all. And I’m the only one with access to my computer.

Approximately Feb 21 or so, the migration to the new user interface erased all my bookmarks. Several years worth, in fact.

How do I know this? The version of the yahoo toolbar prior to the current one did not allow the creation of folders. I always had to visit bookmarks.yahoo.com to create a folder.

On Feb 21 or so (I remember because it happened right before I left on a long trip), I visited bookmarks.yahoo.com to add a folder. The new interface displayed only a couple of my folders, now empty. Everything else was gone. Hundreds of bookmarks had been erased.

I thought this was strange. The bookmarks still existed in my yahoo toolbar, which I refresh relatively frequently. I was concerned that the new interface might require me to input my old bookmarks one at a time.

But I decided to try refreshing my yahoo toolbar first. I thought maybe that would synchronize the data in my toolbar to the now blank bookmarks.yahoo.com.

Backing up the toolbar data locally isn’t an option of course, so I had to roll the dice.

Of course, the worst case happened. Instead of the toolbar data getting input to the website, the blank website data was written into my toolbar.

Alarmed, I updated the toolbar while hoping this was some kind of compatibility issue. I was only a version or two back. But the new toolbar version didn’t change the situation.

So now my data’s gone. Calling yahoo didn’t help much. They don’t have phone support for the bookmarks product.

Even with the new yahoo toolbar, with my setup, it’s impossible to add bookmarks. Despite Javascript enabled in firefox, the “save” button in the new bookmarks window is always grayed out. The cancel button works fine. I have to visit the website to add a bookmark, which is not convenient.

So as it is, the bookmarks/toolbar product doesn’t work for my XPSP2/FF2.0.02/toolbar 14020070112 combination.

Also, Yahoo erased years of my data.

Lawrence

Lawrence — without knowing more (like your Y!ID) it’s hard to say why a problem might have occured when merging your data.

First, did you check in the uncategorized folder for missing bookmarks? They might be there, and just got a little disorganized.

Second, if they’re not in the uncategorized folder, go to our tools => import page and try importing again.

If all else fails, you can still access your old bookmarks from our UK site (I’ll talk to our team about maintaining this data on another domain, but for now, use UK):

http://uk.bookmarks.yahoo.com

There’s an export feature there you can use.

Thanks for your reply Nathan to my last comment. My yahoo name is Lorenzo68. I didn’t realize that the id didn’t get published with the post.

No, the bookmarks weren’t in the uncategorized folder, but the Tools>Import tip did the trick! I’m amazed! Grateful! Wow. The bookmarks are back from limbo.

I hadn’t considered that approach because I thought my data would be ported over to the new interface automatically. In other words, isn’t having to import data from “Yahoo Bookmarks” to “Yahoo Bookmarks” a little unexpected? The possibility one might have to do that should be mentioned in the help section. (Though I’m sure the help section is run by an entirely different crew of people.)

Nonetheless, you’re the internet hero for the day. I appreciate your initiative to help someone.

Now, for your next trick, can you get the “Save” button working in the Save Bookmark popup window?

Otherwise, I’m pretty upbeat about the interface, especially the searching and tagging parts of it. Very useful stuff.

Lawrence

Lawrence, no problem, I’m glad it helped. And yes, your data was *supposed* to be ported over automatically, but there were the odd accounts that had migration snafus from what I gather and the manual import usually fixes this right up.

As for the save button — is this greyed out on the actual toolbar? And if so, are you using IE or Firefox, and what version of toolbar are you using? Also, make sure you’re logged in to the toolbar.

As an alternative, you can always use the bookmarklet instead. The directions are here:

http://bookmarks.yahoo.com/tools/showsave

Note that if you’re using IE, you may have security settings to content with, as IE thinks of this tool as a popup.

//nathan

Many of the last bookmarks I saved have been lost by Yahoo. I went to use them where I knew there were and they were gone. There were located in various branches of my bookmarks tree so I know I have not mistakenly deleted a branch. Very unreliable.

I love Yahoo Bookmarks and Toolbar and have used them for around ten years. I love the import-and- export to Bookmark.html file feature, present in past Toolbar versions. This gives you confidence that years of work and sweat are not gone in an instance. I know Yahoo takes care of everything (great thanks), but it will put more confidence to us if you also provide us the ability to manually save our work to a file (import export) for backup.

Long live Yahoo …!

Eddie

What is the best way to create subfolders in MyY! Bookmarks?

Can I do it on the fly from the toolbar dropdown? Or do I have to go to the bookmarks web page? My old subfolders came over with the import, but now I can’t figure out how to make new ones – I’ve tried to do it both in the drop down on the Y! toolbar and from the web page. I did a search in help and of course, there was nothing there for sub folders. For example: I’d like to create a folder called “Crafts” and then within that make subfolders for “knitting”, “glass”, “kids”, etc, how do I do it?

Thanks,
-em

Could you make this any more Complicated?????

I tried a few things on my own and now I’m even more confused as to why this process has to be so freakin’ complicated. I’m thinking that all the folders I create from the dropdown are always subfolders, because when I try to create a new one it wants to know which folder to put it in. So last night from the dropdown I tried to create a bookmark for a knitting site, it allowed me to create a folder called “Crafts”, but wouldn’t allow me to create a subfolder for “knitting”. Instead it wanted to know which folder to put my “Crafts” folder into, and since it didn’t belong in any of my other folders I was forced to choose UNCATORGORIZED. I can understand a bookmark being UNCATAGORIZED, but why must I choose to put a folder into another folder – why can’t it just be a FOLDER?

Now from the dropdown, I can’t get to the Crafts folder unless I scroll down to the bottom of my alphabetized list of folders, hit MORE, then select the last item on the entire list called UNCATAGORIZED and then click the folder named “Crafts”.

So I go to my Bookmarks web page to try to move the “Crafts” folder out of UNCATAGORIZED and it’s already alphabetized correctly in the regular list – so I click on it, find the teeny, tiny little “create folder” at the very bottom of the page – don’t you think that feature deserves a more prominent location? Anyway, I create a subfolder called “knitting” and then move the “knitting” site into it. This was all done last night. The window, I’m using IE 7.0 with tabs, is still open from last night, and the changes I made have not shown up in MyY! toolbar. I still can’t get to the “Crafts” folder without going to the “UNCATAGORIZED” section at the very bottom of the list and the “knitting” subfolder is still not showing up. So I open up a new window, since repeatedly hitting “Refresh Toolbar” doesn’t refresh my bookmarks, and there is no “Refresh Bookmarks” button to hit, and going to the MyY! Bookmarks pages and making changes doesn’t reflect in an already open window… Sorry, where was I? Opening a new window, that should do it. Nope, Now I’m back to an old but very familiar problem of an empty list of bookmarks from the dropdown. COMPLETELY EMPTY. I wrote to Y! about this months ago, and again a few weeks ago. They sent me a long email with three paragraphs of unrelated excuses and then the very last paragraph explained that this too is a bug and the work around is to double click or several click the dropdown arrow and it will populate the bookmarks dropdown. Only that doesn’t work. My list is still empty.

So now I have two windows open, one with my bookmarks listed in the dropdown, but out of date and another with my bookmarks not appearing in the dropdown, all I get in that dropdown are the first four buttons starting with “save this page”, etc.

Any suggestions on what I’m doing wrong and how I can fix this?