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Upon update to v118 lost all Bookmarks, no restore

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  • 1 has this problem
  • 15 views
  • Last reply by srih4

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upgraded to v118 9'30 Bookmarks lost and not able to access old profile, or restore using "Manage Bookmarks"

See attached: Only see one real profile (current, new) in App Support > Firefox > Profiles. The second profile that exists has virtually nothing in it compared to the new one created upon upgrade. Only three tiny files key4,cert9,pkcs11. Nothing else to restore from.

Bookmark manager >> restore >> despite seeing 10 dates to chose form , error messages every time, "unable to process the backup file." Now what?

I do see a "places.sqlite" file which seems to show "last modified" date of prior to my unfortunate update. But when I try to have Firefox open it, nothing happens. Just new browser windows every time.

THX in advance.

upgraded to v118 9'30 Bookmarks lost and not able to access old profile, or restore using "Manage Bookmarks" See attached: Only see one real profile (current, new) in App Support > Firefox > Profiles. The second profile that exists has virtually nothing in it compared to the new one created upon upgrade. Only three tiny files key4,cert9,pkcs11. Nothing else to restore from. Bookmark manager >> restore >> despite seeing 10 dates to chose form , error messages every time, "unable to process the backup file." Now what? I do see a "places.sqlite" file which seems to show "last modified" date of prior to my unfortunate update. But when I try to have Firefox open it, nothing happens. Just new browser windows every time. THX in advance.
Attached screenshots

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Only the new profile created upon update is available. Doesnt help. THX

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You can look at this tool to inspect a compressed jsonlz4 bookmarks backup and possibly convert this file to HTML to be able to import/merge bookmarks.

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Error message upon dragging .json file into tool Please advise? THX for All

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Found another .jsonlz4 file which, when dragged into tool, was able to create HTML file >> but Firefox Library >> Import Bookmarks from HTML >> nothing happens when I select that file (tried several times).

Q: Any way to get Firefox to import from this file: Original: "bookmarks-2023-09-26_4923_HjU2CR7qQCTW-zswoN3Uqw==.jsonlz4"

or created via tool: "bookmarks_from_json.html"

?? THX All

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Your last screenshot could indicate that the backups in the bookmarkbackups folder are indeed corrupted and aren't of any use.

If you use the Time Machine or other backup then try to restore file(s) from this backup.

Was Firefox running since the first screenshot in the question shows several -shm and -wal temp files that would only be there when Firefox is running or closed unexpectedly  ? I also see a cert8.db file that is newer than the cert9.db file that current releases would use.

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You can try renaming/deleting places.sqlite and deleting possible places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal files and rename the bookmarkbackups folder to prevent Firefox from rebuilding the bookmarks before trying to import the HTML backup. You can open the HTML backup in a tab to see what it looks like and what bookmarks are in the file.

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Incredibly frustrating that simple update resulted in loss of all of my bookmarks accumulated over untold years. No fix has worked. No backup bookmark file can be restored. No previous HTML file I saved of bookmarks can be imported. And I should add that using Firfox I am now unable to even save new bookmarks. complete failure. Please prevent for anyone else going forward.

Modified by srih4