If you use Sync then best is to disconnect Sync temporarily during troubleshooting.

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder.

• use "Verify Integrity" button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page

In case errors are reported with "Verify Integrity" close and restart Firefox and retry.

If "Verify Integrity" cannot repair places.sqlite, rename/remove all places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder. 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

See also:

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-bookmarks-and-history-will-not-be-functional

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.

• Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory:
  Windows: Show Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

Best is to reconnect one device (start wit desktop) at the time and wait for the initial Sync to finish before connecting another device once you have fixed the bookmarks.

hi cor-el,

thank you for your prompt and detailed reply. i did what you said, which didn't work, then tried restarting in safe mode, then did a refresh. still not getting anywhere. then i realized that my bookmarks had a great deal of duplicate folders and links, which according to further research is a fairly common side effect of syncing.

so now i'm trying to figure out how to clean up this mess, playing around with Raindrop and Bookmark OS to see if i can keep this from happening again. any thoughts on a good bookmark utility? hard to find apps that can dig through such large volumes without taking forever or crashing.

Did you remove (or rename) all places.sqlite files in the profile folder with Firefox closed ?

You may have to restore an older backup in the bookmarkbackups folder in case the most recent that Firefox uses is already corrupted.

• Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks -> Import & Backup -> Restore
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

hi cor-el,

i'm in the midst of reconstructing manually, after using the Bookmark Dupes add-on successfully. there are still a lot of duplicate and empty folders i was afraid to remove with the app, because a lot of stuff needs to be merged manually.

i also couldn't do what you suggested, because this corruption has been going on for quite awhile, presumably since i created the sync last year. i just didn't notice until now. i got a new phone last week and re-synced it yesterday, which immediately reshuffled the recents list, although not actually deleting anything.

so it looks like everything is there, just long overdue for organizing. thank you for your assistance. in the future i will be more diligent about staying on top of housekeeping promptly.

Shuffling only recent lists like recently bookmarked isn't important because these lists aren't a real folder, but show the result of a database query. You would have to check the real folder where they are located.

ah, that makes sense. do you happen to know how to recreate the Recently Bookmarked list in a sidebar folder once the original smart folder has been lost? when i click the Library icon in the toolbar, then select Bookmarks, i get a list of recent bookmarks in the correct order. is there any way to port that to the sidebar? or would i have to create a query?

The query that was previously in Firefox had this URI: You can set maxResults=10 to suit your needs

Name: Recently Bookmarked
Location: place:folder=BOOKMARKS_MENU&folder=UNFILED_BOOKMARKS&folder=TOOLBAR&queryType=1&sort=12&maxResults=10&excludeQueries=1

Name: Most Visited
Location: place:sort=8&maxResults=10

Name: Recently Visited Bookmarks
Location: place:onlyBookmarked=true&sort=4&maxResults=30

See also:

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mozilla/Tech/Places/Places_query_URIs

wow, thank you!!!