Managing Profiles

If you use the Internet at home and at work, you may want to have access to a different set of bookmarks, preferences, address books, email accounts, Sidebar setup, and so on. Similarly, family members may want to share a copy of the same browser software but keep their Internet identities separate.

The Profile Manager lets you create different profiles, each with its own bookmarks, preferences, email settings, and so on. You automatically create a default profile when you first install your browser software. After you create one or more additional profiles, you will be asked which you want to use each time you launch the browser.

Creating a New Profile

To create a profile:

1. Open the Profile Manager:
   • If &brandShortName; is running: Open the Tools menu and select Switch Profile.
   • If &brandShortName; is closed: Open the Start menu and choose Programs, then &brandShortName;, then Profile Manager. Hold down the Option key while you're starting &brandShortName; from the Finder or the Dock. Type the following at the command line: ./mozilla -profilemanager
2. Click Create Profile, read the Profile description, and then click Next.
3. Enter a profile name. This can be anything you like, such as your real name or a name that's related to what you use the profile for, such as School.
4. Accept the default location for the new profile, or click the Choose Folder button and navigate to the location you want.
5. If you have Language Packs or Regional Content Packs installed, click Region Selection and choose the Language/Content set you want.
6. Click Finish.

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Deleting or Renaming a Profile

You may want to delete profiles that you don't normally use. To delete or rename an existing profile:

1. Open the Profile Manager:
   • If &brandShortName; is running: Open the Tools menu and select Switch Profile. Note: You can't delete the profile that is in use.
   • If &brandShortName; is closed: Open the Start menu and choose Programs, then &brandShortName;, then Profile Manager. Hold down the Option key while you're starting &brandShortName; from the Finder or the Dock. Type the following at the command line: ./mozilla -profilemanager
2. To delete a profile, select its name and click Delete Profile. In the confirmation box, choose one of the following options:
   • Delete files: Deletes the whole profile folder with its stored data (bookmarks, preferences, email accounts, and so on). Make sure that you won't need anything from the profile in the future before you choose this option.
   • Don't delete files: Removes the profile from the list of available profiles, but keeps the profile folder. By choosing this option none of your profile's stored data will be deleted.
3. To rename a profile, select its name, click Rename Profile, and follow the instructions.

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Roaming Profiles

Roaming profiles allow you to store your profile and associated settings on a central server or file share. The advantage of this is that your settings can follow you from one machine to another. For example, you may wish to use &brandShortName; both at work and at home keeping your bookmarks, address book, and other settings in sync, or a company may want to allow its employees to use their &brandShortName; profile on any computer.

Roaming profiles can be stored on a HTTP or FTP server. You will need a user name and password on that server, so that you can have write access to the appropriate directory for storing and retrieving your profile. Alternatively, for computers that use a common file share, you can store the profile in a local directory using the Copy method.

Whenever you start &brandShortName;, your profile is downloaded and whenever you shutdown &brandShortName;, your profile is uploaded.

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Roaming User Preferences

This section describes how to use the main Roaming User preferences panel. If you're not already viewing it, follow these steps:

1. Open the &brandShortName; Edit menu and choose Preferences.
2. Click on the Roaming User category.
3. Select Enable remote profile storage to activate roaming for the current profile.
4. Select one of the following:
   • HTTP / FTP: Choose this if you wish to have the profile information copied to a FTP or HTTP server.
     • Base URL: Type the URL of the directory where the roaming profile will be stored. This can be an FTP, HTTP or HTTPS URL. FTP is probably easiest to set up on a home network. In other cases, especially when transmitting over the Internet, it is strongly recommended to use HTTPS, because otherwise, all your saved passwords and bookmarks (depending on your Item Selection) might be read by other people on the same network.

       Examples:
       <https://user@http-server/dir/>
       <ftp://user@ftp-server//home/user/dir/>
       <ftp://user@ftp-server/dir/>

     • Username: Type the user name that will be used to access the FTP or HTTP server.
     • Save password: Enable this option to save the password for the user name that you have supplied.
     • Password: Type the password for the user name that you supplied.
   • File Copy: Choose this if you wish to have the profile information copied to a local directory.
     • Click Browse and select the directory where you wish the profile information to be copied to and retrieved from.

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Roaming User Preferences - Item selection

By default, only bookmarks, cookies, and the personal addressbook are stored on the roaming server. If all items are greyed out, make sure to have Roaming enabled.To enable or disable roaming of other profile informations, follow these steps:

1. Open the &brandShortName; Edit menu and choose Preferences.
2. Under the Roaming User category, click Item Selection. (If no subcategories are visible, double-click Roaming User to expand the list.)
3. Select the items that you wish to be included in the roaming profile synchronization.

You cannot roam your local email, partly because that would take too long. Use IMAP for this purpose.

Note: If you are using a slow connection, be aware that some files can be quite large, so this will impact your startup time. &brandShortName; will have to download locally all of the files you selected from the list before being fully functional, and save them back to the remote server when you exit &brandShortName;.

For further information about setting up Roaming Access on a server, see the online document mod_roaming - Roaming Access module for Apache or Manually Implementing Roaming Access.

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Copyright © 2003-2005 The Mozilla Foundation.