I have saved old Internet Explorer History files (%USERPROFILE%\Local
Settings\History\History.IE5) from previous windows installations, and
I would like to know -- How do I merge those old history files in with
my current internet explorer history ?

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Request for Question Clarification by aceresearcher-ga on 14 Nov 2002 01:19 PST

nhdw,

Are you intent on keeping these old History links in sub-folders by
week visited? Or do you just want to get them all included somewhere
in your "History" folder?

aceresearcher

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Clarification of Question by nhdw-ga on 14 Nov 2002 01:23 PST

aceresearcher,

I would like for them to appear in Internet Explorer (by week visited)
when I click on the history button...

Thanks,
nhdw

nhdw,

In the lower left-hand corner of your screen, right-click on "Start",
Choose "Explore". Find Folder C:\WINDOWS\History, and left-click on
it. This should bring up a list of sub folders:
  ...
- 3 weeks ago
- 2 weeks ago
- Last week
- Monday
- Tuesday
  ...
- Today

Double-click on the oldest sub-folder you see. (For me, that is "3
weeks ago", so I will use that in my example.) This should display all
the history sub-folders in that folder.

In the lower left-hand corner of your screen, right-click on "Start",
Choose "Explore" again. Find the drive/folder where the history that
you want to import is located.

One by one, double-click on each of these subfolders, and for each
subfolder pull down "Edit", choose "Select All", and then right-click
on the selected list and choose "Copy" (or pull down "Edit", and
choose "Copy".

Go back to the other Windows Explorer window where you have "3 weeks
ago" open, right-click, and select "Paste". This should start the copy
process. If there are quite a lot of links in the folder you are
importing, this may take awhile. Just be patient and let it do its
thing, as IE and Windows can sometimes call up the "blue screen of
death" if asked to do too many cpu- or memory-intensive processes at
once.

After you have done this for each of the History folders to be
imported, you should now have access to them from the History button
on the IE toolbar, under "3 weeks ago". Of course, you will want to
make sure that your IE "Tools/Internet Options/General" "Days to keep
pages in History" option is set to 999 days, so that they don't get
lost.

A word of Warning: I have found that IE will stop working properly
once in awhile if the number of pages in History gets too big, and
periodically I have to clear history, or IE will just be dead in the
water. If this is the case for you as well, a better method might be
to create a folder on your computer called "C:\WINDOWS\History2", and
copy your old history files into that folder. You will not be able to
access them with the History button on the IE toolbar, but you can use
Windows Explorer to open the file, find the page you want, and
double-click on it to open it.


Before Rating my Answer, if you have any questions or problems, or
this doesn't seem to do the trick for you, please post a Request for
Clarification, and I will be glad to do what is necessary to get your
issue resolved.

I hope that this information provides exactly what you needed!

Regards,

aceresearcher

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Clarification of Answer by aceresearcher-ga on 14 Nov 2002 01:38 PST

Oops, nhdw, your Clarification arrived while I was typing my Answer.
Hang on for a bit, and I will see whether it is possible to do this,
and if so, how.

Thanks,

aceresearcher

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Request for Answer Clarification by nhdw-ga on 14 Nov 2002 01:48 PST

aceresearcher,

Also ... I forgot to mention that I am importing into a windows 2000
environment ... I did as you described, but when I open the dictory
where the History files (to be imported) are kept, all I see are
directories such as:
MSHist012002051320020520 ...
Inside the only file I see is an index.dat ...

This question is worth $10 more to me if you can find the answer...
I'm new to google answers, and noticed I cant increase the answer
price, but I noticed you can leave a tip, which I will do if you find
the answer ...

Thanks,
nhdw

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Request for Answer Clarification by nhdw-ga on 14 Nov 2002 01:53 PST

aceresearcher, 

It's ok that all of the previous history goes into one "3 weeks ago"
folder as you described... Just so that it shows up somewhere under
the folders inside Internet Explorer ... (I thought you were hinting
at exporting the links to some kind of html file previously) ...

Thanks again,
nhdw

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Clarification of Answer by aceresearcher-ga on 14 Nov 2002 02:01 PST

nhdw,

Can you describe to me the process you used for saving the history
files from your old computers?

Thanks for your patience!

aceresearcher

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Request for Answer Clarification by nhdw-ga on 14 Nov 2002 02:20 PST

Yes... I went to DOS and did the following:

CD %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\History
xcopy *.* d:\savedir /s/e/v/h

... Looking at my CURRENT history directory under win2k... I see the
following:

%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\History
  |
  |-desktop.ini
  |-History.IE5\
         |
         |-desktop.ini
         |-index.dat
         |-MSHist012002111420021115\
         |         |-index.dat
         |
         |-MSHist012002111320021114\
         |         |-index.dat
         |
         |-(many more of these MSHIST directories with the only file
            inside being index.dat)

This leads me to believe that the actual history links are stored
inside the index.dat's ...

Many Thanks,
nhdw

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Clarification of Answer by aceresearcher-ga on 14 Nov 2002 02:21 PST

Okay, let me check into this.