Firefox Community Forum

Mozillers,

I depend heavily in my environmental and other work on Firefox and am grateful for its ability to restore previous tabs when my laptop, not infrequently, stops working abruptly.

Now the much-used bookmarks have disappeared. A search site states promisingly:

"To restore Firefox bookmarks, use the built-in backup feature by going to Menu > Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks > Import & Backup > Restore, then select a dated backup or a manual file (like a JSON backup) to bring back lost bookmarks..."

But my Firefox's Bookmarks drop-down menu has no Manage Bookmarks option. PLEASE, what must I do?

Elsewhere I managed to find this file which apparently contains recent bookmarks:

"C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\unk14jlv.default-release-1647366062305\bookmarkbackups\bookmarks-2025-12-26_95_4IdGtYxezJpwuH1UIiT1bRwe1K6bcGO8rv0mqa9rUWU=.jsonlz4"

But attempting to open it with Applications\firefox.exe (default) accomplishes nothing.

FOOL-proof instructions would be wonderful. Thank you.

I posted a question in here two days ago because my firefox wouldnt open anymore i got a follow up answer telling me to give the crash id but never got a follow up after i sent it . i tried shuffling between profiles and in the end got it working but today my pc had a crash while firefox was open and it had to restart when i tried to open firefox its as if i just installed it and i dont have any backups to be honest i tried checking the appdata folder and there is a profile folder that seems big enough that it might be mine but it doesnt seem like firefox is reading it for some reason i tried switching the data in the profile folder that firefox is considering but it didnt work .

I opened FF this afternoon and it op0end like a new first time install- asking about setting up some damn profiles and showing news, AI, weather and crap I do not want or use..

I can not seem to restore it. All bookmarks, PW, menu bars and links are now gone.

More of a comment. Firefox is the only browser I have used. Love it! Many important bookmarks to easily navigate. Broser update messed up bookmarks and took me hours to get back! Found. Save key and/or password! Learned a lot about profiles and Firefox along the way. Ugh!

There was a issue with my computer due to which I had to reset the unit and once the reset was completed I'm unable to recover my data as its asking for 32 account recovery key, I'm unable to find that key anywhere and need help where can i find the key as there are important bookmarks which I need back.

Since Firefox automatically updated (14.0.1) on my MacBook Air (2025 model) several weeks ago, the Bookmarks and History functions haven't worked. Can anyone suggest how I can fix this?

• Old laptop can no longer access the internet; corrupt Windows 10. Bought a new HP laptop. Have Sync turned on on both laptops but am not getting any favorites, passwords that I desperately need. What are my options given the old laptop can't connect.

Dear Mozilla Support,

My name is Sizhe Xiong. Today when I launched Firefox on my Windows computer, the browser suddenly required me to select or create a new profile before continuing. I had no option to skip this step, so I created a new one.

After that, Firefox asked me to log in or register a Mozilla account. I used the same Gmail address that I’ve always used for Firefox Sync, but it seems that a new account was automatically created, and all my previous data — including bookmarks, history, saved passwords, and extensions — disappeared.

When I checked my local Profiles folder under C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles, I found several new folders created around the same time, but none of them contain my old data (all places.sqlite files are around 5120 KB).

These bookmarks and passwords are very important to me. Could you please help check if it’s possible to recover my old Firefox data, or if my previous Sync data can still be linked to my Mozilla account (using the same Gmail address)?

Thank you very much for your help.

Best regards, Sizhe Xiong

I am incredibly frustrated by the continuing problem of all my Bookmarks disappearing with the usual "The bookmarks and history system will not be functional because one of Firefox's files is in use by another application. Some security software can cause this problem." This issue has been going on since NOVEMBER!!! I usually manage to get my Bookmarks back by closing all txt files that I need to keep open, store them in a new folder on my laptop, and then restart my laptop. This time, it didn't work.

Can anyone steer me to a permanent solution to this problem?

Thanks, in advance, for any help offered.

CCleaner wiped out my bookmarks and their functionality. I have repaired, then uninstalled CCleaner. I have refreshed, uninstalled then reinstalled Firefox. I have logged in and out of Firefox. I have made an HTML file of bookmarks from another device in order to try to import them. Firefox bookmarks will not proceed to an upload stage. I went into setting to add the HTML of bookmarks and it said "this is not a bookmarks file." Well, Firefox made that HTML bookmarks file so I have no idea how that could be. Nothing I have tried has worked.

cleaning up my computer, I accidentally deleted firefox. I had a list of favourite links, and I lost them. Is there any way of recovering my list of favourites?

thank you, Glen A Goodale, [email removed]@gmail.com

I still have not made any progress recovering my lost Firefox bookmarks. I have tried several methods with no success. The bookmark toolbar doesn't work, so I can't bookmark any more pages. I tried restarting the computer and Firefox to no avail. I am considering switching to another browser. I am using Duck Duck Go which is not as good as Firefox that I have been using for about the last 10 years. I might try Microsoft Edge or Bing or some other browser.

Sincerely

Jeff [email address]

I have been using old-style profiles for a long time, but they didn't work so well for me. The new profiles system was great - specifically that each one was a FF instance that could be opened and quit independently of any others (and most importantly had a different icon). I setup 5 or 6.

But i quit all my FFs due to memory issues. Then after restarting a FF, it was an instance from the old profiles system and there was no profiles item in main menu (under three horiz lines top-right).

Going to about:profiles didn't show them (as expected).

I started from command-line to launch FF with Profile Manager and after selecting a profile that way, then there now a Profiles menu item. However it empty.

I had a look and there is a ` ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profile Groups` that contains a number of sqlite files and each has a -shm and -wal file also. I looked in the profiles table for each of these. 1 lists all the new profiles I created and one points to default old-style Profile instance that opens (ie. Profiles/Main-Firefox-Window).

about:config - browser.profiles.enabled is true

I also noticed a browser.profiles.forceEnableRefresh but it appears to be undocumented.

My question: HOW can I restore my new profiles? I put some work into icons etc.. and of course their history, so i don't want to have to recreate them.