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Cannot delete bookmarks

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Hey, I cannot, for the life of me, get to a point where I can delete individual bookmarks. I have researched all avenues and fixes here on the forum, and NONE seem to help out. Sync is not on. I have tried removing the places.sqlite, rebooting Firefox, then putting the places file back into the profile.

Verifying integrity gives me this: > Task: checkIntegrity - Unable to check places.sqlite integrity: Error: Error(s) encountered during statement execution: > Task: invalidateCaches - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: checkCoherence - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: expire - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: originFrecencyStats - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: vacuum - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: stats - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: _refreshUI - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task.

But I don't know how to remedy this "error".

I have tried to restore bookmarks, but that just erases ALL bookmarks, leaving the folders in place.

Any suggestions would be very appreciated! Thanks

Hey, I cannot, for the life of me, get to a point where I can delete individual bookmarks. I have researched all avenues and fixes here on the forum, and NONE seem to help out. Sync is not on. I have tried removing the places.sqlite, rebooting Firefox, then putting the places file back into the profile. Verifying integrity gives me this: > Task: checkIntegrity - Unable to check places.sqlite integrity: Error: Error(s) encountered during statement execution: > Task: invalidateCaches - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: checkCoherence - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: expire - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: originFrecencyStats - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: vacuum - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: stats - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. > Task: _refreshUI - The task queue was cleared by an error in another task. But I don't know how to remedy this "error". I have tried to restore bookmarks, but that just erases ALL bookmarks, leaving the folders in place. Any suggestions would be very appreciated! Thanks

All Replies (7)

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Thank you for the detailed analysis.

I assume a normal shutdown/restart of your Mac hasn't helped (this frees up file locks that can block access to the Places database).

When you check the list of bookmark backups on the Restore menu, do they list the number of "items" you expect? Items includes bookmarks, folders, and separators, so the number usually is higher than you would think. We should make sure you have a good backup in case we need to remove your Places database and let Firefox start building a new one from scratch.

More info on that option in this article: Fix "The bookmarks and history system will not be functional" error message.

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Nope, still consistent after several restarts.

When I'm looking at the numbers of the restores, they all only say (27) which is very surprising, as I've got 100s of individual bookmarks.....?

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If "Verify Integrity" cannot repair places.sqlite, rename/remove all places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed. Firefox will rebuild places.sqlite and restore the bookmarks from a recent JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder.

  • keep a backup copy of places.sqlite in case a new places.sqlite database has to be created

You lose the history when a new places.sqlite is created. Note that you may have to restore an older JSON backup yourself.

See also:

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

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Just tried the instructions on the link you provided, same results as restoring from backup: 27 files, only empty folders restored. Even created a brand new backup file just before trying it, so.....?

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When you remove places.sqlite then Firefox will try to restore the bookmarks from the most recent JSON backup. If you do not get all bookmarks and folders then you need to find an older backup.

The name of an automatically created JSON bookmarks backup in the bookmarkbackups folder includes a total item count (folders and separators included) and an hash value to prevent saving the same backup more than once. You also see this count in the Restore menu drop-down list.

  • bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD_<item count>_<hash>.jsonlz4.
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dennyfreeman said

Nope, still consistent after several restarts. When I'm looking at the numbers of the restores, they all only say (27) which is very surprising, as I've got 100s of individual bookmarks.....?

There are only 27 items in the backup files? I wonder if you are running the wrong profile of Firefox. Could you check...

Profile Manager Page

Inside Firefox, type or paste about:profiles in the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it.

This page should list at least one profile and could list many. (Each profile has two folders and one or more buttons. Do not use any Remove buttons!)

The profile that Firefox is currently using will have this:

This is the profile in use and it cannot be deleted.

Do you have another profile listed on this page? If so, you can check whether it is the one you were using recently by clicking its Launch profile in new browser button.

If it isn't what you want, simply close that new window.

If it IS what you want, back on the about:profiles page, click the Set as default profile button for that profile so Firefox uses it automatically at the next startup.

Fingers crossed...

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None of that seems to fix it. I finally accepted that something seems to have gotten corrupted somewhere along the line, and copy/pasted everything into a word doc and reopened/bookmarked everything...... ugh.

Thanks for all your help/suggestions