bookmarks have been replaced by an old set
After updating to FF 3.6.25 my bookmarks have been replaced with an old set with lots of my newest bookmarks missing. I've gone through organize bookmarks, restore but the only date is 5th Jan which was when i downloaded the new FF. How do i get the old bookmarks back ?
Chosen solution
Thanks for the help cor-rel.
Yes, I was using Firefox 2.0.0.20 until this update to Firefox 3.6.25. The most up to date version I can run on this OS.
After considerable head-scratching, I managed to locate the location of the old bookmarks on my computer and import them into Firefox. As I mentioned above, clicking through, bookmarks-organise bookmarks-restore, showed only one restore date, which was also the date of the upgrade to FF 3.6.25. I don't understand why these old lists of bookmarks were not displayed, since they were still on the computer ?
I'll detail how I retrieved them, for the benefit of anyone else in the same situation.
Start at the USERS FOLDER (the one with your name on it) then LIBRARY then APPLICATION SUPPORT then FIREFOX then PROFILES then the folder .DEFAULT you should see files labelled BOOKMARKS and a folder labelled BOOKMARKBACKUPS you will see .html and .json files within this. Select an .html file and an appropriate date, open it in Firefox to check. Now go back to Firefox and click through bookmarks-organise bookmarks-restore-choose file and search for and select the file you just found.
Good luck, happy surfing!
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Can no one help me?
If there aren't any older JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder and you are sure that you still have your original Firefox Profile Folder then your old bookmarks are probably lost.
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Backing_up_and_restoring_bookmarks_-_Firefox
You are running an old OS X 10.4 version on an Intel Mac, so you can't update Firefox unless you update to OS X 10.5.8 or later.
Chosen Solution
Thanks for the help cor-rel.
Yes, I was using Firefox 2.0.0.20 until this update to Firefox 3.6.25. The most up to date version I can run on this OS.
After considerable head-scratching, I managed to locate the location of the old bookmarks on my computer and import them into Firefox. As I mentioned above, clicking through, bookmarks-organise bookmarks-restore, showed only one restore date, which was also the date of the upgrade to FF 3.6.25. I don't understand why these old lists of bookmarks were not displayed, since they were still on the computer ?
I'll detail how I retrieved them, for the benefit of anyone else in the same situation.
Start at the USERS FOLDER (the one with your name on it) then LIBRARY then APPLICATION SUPPORT then FIREFOX then PROFILES then the folder .DEFAULT you should see files labelled BOOKMARKS and a folder labelled BOOKMARKBACKUPS you will see .html and .json files within this. Select an .html file and an appropriate date, open it in Firefox to check. Now go back to Firefox and click through bookmarks-organise bookmarks-restore-choose file and search for and select the file you just found.
Good luck, happy surfing!
Modified by scott69
Firefox 2.0.0.20 uses HTML backups and Firefox 3 and later versions use JSON backups, so you won't see the bookmarks-xx-xx-xxxx.html files from Firefox 2.0.0.20 if you try to restore bookmarks in Firefox 3.6.x. In that case you need to import the HTML file.
Firefox 3+ versions will automatically rebuild the bookmarks from the bookmarks.html file in the profile folder if there is no places.sqlite file and if there are no JSON backups present in the bookmarkbackups folder that can be used to restore bookmarks.
Thanks for your informed input cor-el. Your pointers were and are greatly appreciated. Thank you.
You're welcome