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Bookmark Restore ignoring order and location in folders

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Following an incident with Firefox Sync, I needed to restore my bookmarks. I have a little over 700 bookmarks across 15-25+ folders at mostly 2-3 levels deep but up to 5 levels. All but a handfull of these are all in the bookmarks toolbar.

I have a backup json of everything for restoration. However, when I do restore, everything is messed up: all the bookmarks are there, and all the folders are there with their structure preserved (subfolders in the right folders), but every bookmark has been pulled out of the folder structure and into the toolbar, so all folders are empty of actual bookmarks. This includes taking bookmarks from folders in the bookmark menu. Folders seem to be in the right order, and some bookmarks are, but most bookmarks are in the wrong place and order. Since most of my bookmarks were in folders, I really do not have it in me to put them all back unless I absolutely have to (assuming I can even remember what goes where).

Opening the json in Firefox, selecting "Raw Data" and "Pretty Print", it is clear the json file correctly preserved folder structure and bookmark placement exactly as it was before. Thus, something must be going wrong in how it is being read.

I have tried different restore points with the same outcome. I have sync disabled and have tried removing existing bookmarks first, clearing data, and deleting places.sqlite (as per related help threads) to no avail. Integrity check runs without error. I have also tried on a different OS (Windows 10 and Manjaro KDE) with the same results. I have not seen any other posts with this specific issue.

Would it only work correctly if the export was an html file? Is there anything I can do, like trying to modify the json? Is this expected behavior or a bug to fix? Please advise.

Following an incident with Firefox Sync, I needed to restore my bookmarks. I have a little over 700 bookmarks across 15-25+ folders at mostly 2-3 levels deep but up to 5 levels. All but a handfull of these are all in the bookmarks toolbar. I have a backup json of everything for restoration. However, when I do restore, everything is messed up: all the bookmarks are there, and all the folders are there with their structure preserved (subfolders in the right folders), but every bookmark has been pulled out of the folder structure and into the toolbar, so all folders are empty of actual bookmarks. This includes taking bookmarks from folders in the bookmark menu. Folders seem to be in the right order, and some bookmarks are, but most bookmarks are in the wrong place and order. Since most of my bookmarks were in folders, I really do not have it in me to put them all back unless I absolutely have to (assuming I can even remember what goes where). Opening the json in Firefox, selecting "Raw Data" and "Pretty Print", it is clear the json file correctly preserved folder structure and bookmark placement exactly as it was before. Thus, something must be going wrong in how it is being read. I have tried different restore points with the same outcome. I have sync disabled and have tried removing existing bookmarks first, clearing data, and deleting places.sqlite (as per related help threads) to no avail. Integrity check runs without error. I have also tried on a different OS (Windows 10 and Manjaro KDE) with the same results. I have not seen any other posts with this specific issue. Would it only work correctly if the export was an html file? Is there anything I can do, like trying to modify the json? Is this expected behavior or a bug to fix? Please advise.

Chosen solution

This is a direct interaction with the "Default Bookmark Folder" extension, which makes sense now that I think about it. Firefox bookmark restore is creating new bookmarks, so the extension is forcing them all into the "default" folder (which I set to the toolbar). Restore works as expected when temporarily disabling the extension.

This also explains a behavior I noticed but neglected to mention, which is that it appears to be imported correctly for about 1 second before getting messed up (I assumed this behavior was expected with so many bookmarks).

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Should have done this sooner but I really wasn't expecting an interaction... restoring the bookmarks in troubleshooting mode was successful. Will update when I identify the cause in case anyone else has this issue.

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Chosen Solution

This is a direct interaction with the "Default Bookmark Folder" extension, which makes sense now that I think about it. Firefox bookmark restore is creating new bookmarks, so the extension is forcing them all into the "default" folder (which I set to the toolbar). Restore works as expected when temporarily disabling the extension.

This also explains a behavior I noticed but neglected to mention, which is that it appears to be imported correctly for about 1 second before getting messed up (I assumed this behavior was expected with so many bookmarks).

Modified by thefallinglink