Unlike Google Chrome, the Mozilla Firefox browser does not have its own internal function of exporting, and importing, passwords from Firefox to Firefox, but it can only be done by switching from a different browser to Firefox. When we find ourselves having to format or redo the Firefox profile, and we have so many stored passwords, it can be a problem to remember them to put them all back in the browser.
Once you could do it with the Password Exporter extension, which is no longer compatible with version 57 of Mozilla Firefox, but we can do something with PasswordFox, FF Password Exporter and a copy of two files.
PasswordFox
PasswordFox is one of the many portable utilities of Nirsoft, pay attention that many antivirus could consider it as a malware, or a potential threat, and block it or delete it immediately. Before using it, insert it in the applications allowed by your protection software.
Once the archive contents have been extracted, it signals an error on a 64 bit Windows 10, in case, just press OK and then it works.
I have the Mozilla Firefox profile moved to a different folder than the standard one, but from Fileand Select folder I can go and choose it.
At this point you can save all the password in a text file.
You can not re-import them to a new or newly-formatted computer, you have to re-enter them all manually but at least you have collected them all together in the newly created file.
FF Password Exporter
FF Password Exporter is a program also available in portable version, we can select a different folder where to find the Firefox profile and save all the passwords in a text file from the CSV extension.
Even here it is not possible to re-import the passwords in a new configuration of Mozilla Firefox.
Except for the files
The only way, I found, to export and re-import passwords, is to save the files key4.db and login.json, which are located within the profile folder of Mozilla Firefox, and then copy them in the new browser profile.
If you do not know where to find the profile folder you can refer to the official instructions on the Mozilla.org website.
Beware that in very old versions of Firefox the file to be saved was called key3.db and not key4.db, so check that the versions of Firefox are quite similar and the file names are the same, so you do not have compatibility problems with these files.
Conclusions
If you know any other method, or extension, to export/import stored passwords then let us know via comments.
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