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bookmarks gone

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Hi, difficult to find this way to write you...

I reset my Mac and thought Firefox would keep all my bookmarks for when I would reinstall Firefox and synchronize all my bookmarks, like I always did. It was not necessary to export and to keep them, because I have never had problems before and I trusted Firefox.

Now this did not happen and I lost if not thousands of my bookmarks I have gather in years... I'm very disappointed, for the first time.

Do you have a cache or something or other solution so I can get my bookmarks back? Thanks.

Denis Jockmans.

Hi, difficult to find this way to write you... I reset my Mac and thought Firefox would keep all my bookmarks for when I would reinstall Firefox and synchronize all my bookmarks, like I always did. It was not necessary to export and to keep them, because I have never had problems before and I trusted Firefox. Now this did not happen and I lost if not thousands of my bookmarks I have gather in years... I'm very disappointed, for the first time. Do you have a cache or something or other solution so I can get my bookmarks back? Thanks. Denis Jockmans.

All Replies (5)

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Hi

Thank you for your question about the Firefox Sync service.

It appears from your question, that you are using Firefox Sync as a back up service. This is not what Sync is designed to do. The Firefox Sync service takes a copy of the data you wish to include and transfers it to a second device (typically a mobile device such as a tablet or a telephone) running a copy of Firefox. The storage in between all attached devices is both temporary and fragile and is not stable enough to be (and is not designed as) a reliable backup service.

If you have a copy of your Firefox profile for desktop Firefox, you may be able to recover your bookmarks and other data. Please have a read of this article.

If you have a copy of your data on a mobile version of Firefox, please follow these instructions to connect it to Firefox Sync to copy your data.

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Hi Denis, one other thought: can you tell whether your system retained any Time Machine backups from before the Reset? (As a Windows user, I really have no idea what a Mac Reset involves.)

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Hi.

thank you both for answering so quickly my question.

1) Indeed, I used Firefox Sync convinced that with my Firefox account, it would keep in its cloud or so all my bookmarks and would after having reformatted my Mac (it could also be a PC), having installed Firefox and have it synced, all my bookmarks would be downloaded again.

I do not have a copy of my Firefox profile, nor exported my bookmarks before formatting and I tried your several solutions without succes.

2) I did not use Time Machine. This just because I thought my bookmarks were kept online with Firefox. With Mac reset, I meant reformat my hard drive.


What i do not understand, in several years I regularly reformatted my harddrives, installed Firefox and by opening my account in the browser, all my add-ons, bookmarks and other were also downloaded. Is there no Firefox online account like Onedrive or iCloud? I suppose not.

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Thank you Dropa. I might have it totally wrong. I will never know. But I have in my PC an old profile that would have kept my bookmarks. I'll check it later.

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You can install the About Sync add-on to see what data is stored in your Firefox Account: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/about-sync/

It doesn't have the best interface: you type about:sync in the address bar to review what it sees in your account.