Problems importing current Chrome bookmarks to new MacBook Air

[ej88]

My dilemma:

Old MacBook Pro (Snow Leopard OS) with older no longer supported Chrome (not sure what version of Chrome). All my current bookmarks are on this machine.

New M1 MacBook Air (Big Sur OS), and just downloaded Chrome onto this machine. Bookmarks are some way outdated version, probably a few years old; perhaps from the last time this old version of Chrome was supported?

My goal:

I need to get my current Chrome bookmarks from my old Pro with an old version of Chrome to my new Air.


On the old MacBook, under Chrome > Settings, it says "Oops, Sync has stopped working" and a Learn More link, which I have looked at and is not helpful. https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139?visit_id=1617895834787-5764712759530128876&rd=2

For example, it says

1. Under "You and Google," click Sync and Google services.
   • To find out what you have synced, select Review your synced data.
2. Under "Sync," click Manage what you sync.

However, these options do not appear in the older version of Chrome that I have.

Does anyone know of a way to solve this? I would have thought my bookmarks would be continually updated in the cloud, but perhaps that stopped when the old version of Chrome was no longer supported? Do I have any recourse to get all my bookmarks onto my new Air?

(Note: I stopped using Safari 5 years ago, so that's not an option.)

 

[Longkeg]

OK. You can’t sync to the cloud. You should be able to export your bookmarks locally to a flash drive from your old machine then import them from that drive to the new Mac. The export/import procedures may vary between the versions of Chrome but there must be a way to do it. Try Googling “import export chrome bookmarks”

 

[ej88]

Thanks. Tried what you suggested by googling and took me here: https://www.howtogeek.com/440339/how-to-back-up-and-restore-your-chrome-bookmarks-locally/

Started to follow the steps; problem is, the old Chrome browser does not have a three stacked dots menu icon specifically for Bookmark Manager (the current Chrome browser on the new computer does), nor do I find any Export function in the old Chrome.

There is an Import Bookmarks and Settings function in the old Chrome, which when clicked takes me to Settings and opens a small window labeled "Import Bookmarks and Settings" with a drop down to select Bookmarks HTML File, then I click Choose. This gives another drop down list of what is on my Desktop, where I have an empty folder I labeled "Bookmark folder". I chose that folder and clicked Open. The Open button grays out and the computer just sits there doing apparently nothing, and nothing appears in the folder.

So I'm still stumped. I would think there should be some way to do as you suggested and simply Export my bookmarks into a folder, but I don't know how to do it in the old version of Chrome.

Any suggestions? Sorry, not very computer savvy and not sure where to go from here.