# Help !  I lost Google Earth !!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-i-lost-google-earth/537213>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 24, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-i-lost-google-earth/537213 "2010-04-24T16:05:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-i-lost-google-earth/537213/1 "2010-04-24T16:05:52Z")

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Not sure what happened… I may have uninstalled it in hopes of speeding this darn computer up but that is another story. I may have just deleted the shortcut but I’ve searched for the program file itself.

I know I can just download it again but… I had spent hours adding bookmarks.

So… any thoughts on how I might find the program itself lurking somewhere on my computer? Any thoughts on how I might find those bookmarks if I uninstalled just the program?

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**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-i-lost-google-earth/537213/2 "2010-04-24T16:11:45Z")

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What operating system are you using?

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**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2010, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-i-lost-google-earth/537213/3 "2010-04-24T16:47:21Z")

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Open “My Computer” and navigate to C:\Program Files\Google\Google Earth\client . You should see a file calle googleearth.exe . Right click on it and select ‘send to’ , then "Desktop (make shortcut)’

This will restore the shortcut to Google Earth to your desktop.

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**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-i-lost-google-earth/537213/4 "2010-04-25T14:17:08Z")

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> [@Baron\_Greenback](#):
>
> What operating system are you using?

Windows XP

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**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-i-lost-google-earth/537213/5 "2010-04-25T14:58:00Z")

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OK, look in c:/documents and settings/\<your user account name\>/application data/google/googleearth/

are there files called myplaces.backup.kml and myplaces.kml? That’s your bookmarks I think. If the program file mentioned in Fear’s post above is missing, and the backup file is there, you can probably just reinstall. (I’d make a copy of the files just in case).

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**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-i-lost-google-earth/537213/6 "2010-04-25T15:08:28Z")

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If you want to double-check, open the .kml files in Notepad and check that it contains your bookmarks - the format of the file is pretty straight forward