Do you know how, why the data was lost? What about the rest of your profile? settings, passwords . . . . .

Look on your desktop. Do you see a folder called; Old Firefox?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-run-firefox-when-profile-missing-inaccessible

thanks Fred. It occurred after the latest win 10 update. really, thanks but don't try anymore. I have taken the easy route and moved on. I am 81 and life is too short to follow up FAQs for a problem I didn't create!

Just curious: Did Chrome find your Firefox bookmarks and import them for you?

No, not directly. I had a backup (a few days old) and used that.

One of my biggest irritations is that all browsers now seem to have got rid of the menu bar. I agree that 'most' of it's uses can be found (if one tries hard) in the customise/options area but for those of us who have used the menu bar for many many years, why not just make it optional?

The Menu Bar is easily displayed temporarily when you want to use that menu via hitting the Alt key or the F10 key in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Then just open the drop-down menu that you want to access. It has been an option since 2011 to have it show all the time, but not the "default". Been like that since Firefox 4.0 came out back in March 2011, with a minor tweak with Firefox 29 a few years later.

You can have it showing all the time by right-click at the top of the browser window and selecting Menu Bar so that if has a check-mark in that contextual menu; which is what my 91 yo mother prefers.

I know that but would it be too much trouble to just put it back into options? Is Mozilla really for the users or just for techies?

alezane said

I know that but would it be too much trouble to just put it back into options? Is Mozilla really for the users or just for techies?

The setting described, which can also be enabled by pressing Alt or F10 once and then selecting Menu Bar in the regular View menu itself, has not been an option to be found in the Options section (or Preferences on Mac/Linux). Like other items, this is about their visibility (display), hence it is to be found under View.

Please remember that the right-click (or context) menu generally is a powerful thing in Windows (if not all OSes) and hence in many applications, i.e. chances are you may not even find descriptions of its abilities, such as by using the right-click method at the top of the browser window (on the toolbar next to the address bar) like the-edmeister described above.

Fwiw, I’m not 91 but still enable the Menu Bar in all profiles and copies of Firefox nowadays. I don’t know who made the decision to remove it for Firefox and neither for other (or all) browsers, but it may help if you think like most users do: almost anything - if not all things - can be restored or customized in Mozilla products. That means some things can now have been disabled or moved by default, but that does not mean they are gone. Another "rule" with regard to Firefox is that nothing is just removed by itself - Firefox or the user may however not be able to find some data, and there is always a reason. The additional search bar in the top-right is a similar example.

Would you still be interested in trying to find your bookmarks and history?

If so, it would help if you mentioned what version of Firefox you installed, or if you upgraded it to Quantum (57 or up) from a previous version, and how you used to be able to find your bookmarks and history. It’s possible you just no longer see the Bookmarks Menu button you were used to in 56 or below in order to access it and need to add back the new button manually if you still wish to do so. For an explanation on how to, see this forum reply. Of course you can also choose Show All Bookmarks in the Bookmarks like previously, or press Ctrl+Shift+A. Are they still there, and how about history items in that (library) view?

If the latter doesn’t help, I’m sorry I can’t help as this is a result of another Windows 10 update breaking things (not limited to Firefox in fact but even to MS products) and that I’m not familiar with to fix. I won’t say it’s a bad product, but it’s one of the reasons I don’t switch to it. Needless to say, it’s not amusing to see people changing products such as browsers for that reason. Evil tongues even say .... ;)