Import Export specific Windows Firewall Rule

Question

How do I Export and Import specific Window Firewall rule (both Inbound and Outbound) ?

I can do Import / Export policy but it will use ALL rules not specific rule. Same with Export List, it can export all list of rules of Inbound or Outbound in plain CSV file but it is not helpful because no way to import it back.

I looked at netsh firewall and netsh advfirewall firewall too but they too don't seem to have option to export / import individual rule.

I am just wondering if it is even possible to archive this. I am using Windows 7 Professional

Answer 1

Go to the following key from Windows Registry and export it to a *.reg file:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\FirewallRules

Edit the file in any text editor and remove the entries you don't want. Or you can go to WFwAS, delete any other rules and keep only the ones you want. Then do the step described above. You won't need to edit the reg file as it already contains only what you want.

Import the reg file on the computer you need and you will add only your selected rules. That's all.

Or you can try Windows Firewall Control which has a feature that does this thing. It can export and import only the selected rules in XML format:

https://www.binisoft.org/wfc

Answer 2

You can select only the rules you want to export, then click the "export list" button and when the explorer window opens up you can tick the option to "export only highlighted rules" (just underneath the file name input field)

Answer 3

Another way is to export the rules AS Tab or CSV - also within the "Windows Firewall with Advanced". Choose the "Export List.." option. You can choose TAB or CSV. You do get the whole list, but can delete all the others and either use Notepad++ and replace the delimiter with \r\n option, which will yield the list Or run a pivot in excel to give you the list.

A bit late, but hope it helps others.

Answer 4

Alexandru's answer was hard to follow, but led me to the right path on a Windows server 2012:

Basically, you can manually make rule changes to the FirewallRules registry key, then either Import (to replace) or Merge (to append).

Export the

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\SharedAccess\Parameters\FirewallPolicy\FirewallRules 

as a .reg file.

Edit the file. Remove all rules that you do not want, only keep rules that you do want (e.g. copying rules from a different server to this one). Once done, you simply save the file then right click and choose Merge. This will add the new rule(s) in.

Alternatively, import the new .reg file instead, which should overwrite

Answer 5

Once you have copied the rule, you can copy the scope data too. Just copy the data from the key and paste into the new rule on the new server. I had a deny IP rule with about a thousand IPs in the scope data that I was able to copy over to the new server.