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Need urgent help recovering bookmarks ($ tip for solution!)

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Hi guys. I was clearing out unused software for space and I uninstalled the wrong firefox (I had two installed). I was using a 3rd party program called IObit uninstaller. Usually I know backups appear if uninstalled through the directory but this isn't the case with the 3rd party programs.

So after freaking out a little I looked for recovery programs and found one by the same developer, IObit undelete. I managed to find some json. files with settings, logins and some bookmark files too. However, when I try to restore the bookmarks file through the remaining firefox I'm told it is unable to process the file?

Does anybody please have any ideas what I can do to fix this? I'm pretty bummed out by this, i'll happily send a bit of cash your way if this can be restored again

Hi guys. I was clearing out unused software for space and I uninstalled the wrong firefox (I had two installed). I was using a 3rd party program called IObit uninstaller. Usually I know backups appear if uninstalled through the directory but this isn't the case with the 3rd party programs. So after freaking out a little I looked for recovery programs and found one by the same developer, IObit undelete. I managed to find some json. files with settings, logins and some bookmark files too. However, when I try to restore the bookmarks file through the remaining firefox I'm told it is unable to process the file? Does anybody please have any ideas what I can do to fix this? I'm pretty bummed out by this, i'll happily send a bit of cash your way if this can be restored again

All Replies (7)

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If you have access to your bookmarks files: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unable_to_process_the_backup_file_-_Firefox

jscher2000 has a tool on his website to extract out your bookmarks and save them to an HTML-format bookmark export file. If you want to try it, here is the page:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/bookbackreader.html

To open the bookmarkbackups folder in Finder, use the "Open in Finder" button in the first table on the Troubleshooting Information page, and double-click into bookmarkbackups where you should see several dated files. From there you can drag and drop onto the conversion tool.

To import the HTML file, see the steps in this article: Import Bookmarks from an HTML file.

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I had replied over on Reddit, so I'll cross-reference that thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/g1xd5f/need_urgent_help_recovering_bookmarks/

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It is quite likely that clusters have been reused if you get an error with decompressing. A successful restore doesn't mean you get a valid file, it merely means that all clusters were found available (free), but with no guarantee for its content.

Were you able to restore the bookmarkbackups folder and possible files in this folder as it is unlikely that all backups in this folder were already being overwritten ? You only need to make sure that the files have the correct .jsonlz4 file extension for a compressed JSON backup.

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FredMcD Top 10 Contributor said

If you have access to your bookmarks files: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unable_to_process_the_backup_file_-_Firefox jscher2000 has a tool on his website to extract out your bookmarks and save them to an HTML-format bookmark export file. If you want to try it, here is the page: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/bookbackreader.html To open the bookmarkbackups folder in Finder, use the "Open in Finder" button in the first table on the Troubleshooting Information page, and double-click into bookmarkbackups where you should see several dated files. From there you can drag and drop onto the conversion tool. To import the HTML file, see the steps in this article: Import Bookmarks from an HTML file.

Hi, if your referring to jscher2000's website I tried uploading the bookmark files and got this message:

File name: bookmarks-2020-04-15_3396_Z9i0NQNVyDJCSLd7BAG3Rg==.jsonlz4; Size: 494944; last modified 4/15/2020, 12:40:41 AM (failed JSON parsing: SyntaxError: JSON.parse: bad control character in string literal at line 1 column 36707 of the JSON data)

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cor-el Top 10 Contributor Moderator said

It is quite likely that clusters have been reused if you get an error with decompressing. A successful restore doesn't mean you get a valid file, it merely means that all clusters were found available (free), but with no guarantee for its content. Were you able to restore the bookmarkbackups folder and possible files in this folder as it is unlikely that all backups in this folder were already being overwritten ? You only need to make sure that the files have the correct .jsonlz4 file extension for a compressed JSON backup.

The recover rating showed 'poor' on the recovery software, it also warned me the files could be overwritten if saved back to the original drive, maybe that might be the cause?

I wasn't able to recover the whole folder, the software shows all the files individually. All bookmark files are .jsonlz4 still.

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Liam Question owner said

Hi, if your referring to jscher2000's website I tried uploading the bookmark files and got this message:

File name: bookmarks-2020-04-15_3396_Z9i0NQNVyDJCSLd7BAG3Rg==.jsonlz4; Size: 494944; last modified 4/15/2020, 12:40:41 AM (failed JSON parsing: SyntaxError: JSON.parse: bad control character in string literal at line 1 column 36707 of the JSON data)

Could you try the "(Fallback: Unstructured URL List)" button. I believe that is the older code which treats the contents of the box as possibly broken rather than requiring a valid structure. It still is looking for cues such as {"url": to know where the URLs are, so if it's really trashed, then it probably won't find much.

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jscher2000 Top 10 Contributor said

Liam Question owner said

Hi, if your referring to jscher2000's website I tried uploading the bookmark files and got this message:

File name: bookmarks-2020-04-15_3396_Z9i0NQNVyDJCSLd7BAG3Rg==.jsonlz4; Size: 494944; last modified 4/15/2020, 12:40:41 AM (failed JSON parsing: SyntaxError: JSON.parse: bad control character in string literal at line 1 column 36707 of the JSON data)

Could you try the "(Fallback: Unstructured URL List)" button. I believe that is the older code which treats the contents of the box as possibly broken rather than requiring a valid structure. It still is looking for cues such as {"url": to know where the URLs are, so if it's really trashed, then it probably won't find much.

Sorry, that button is only on my Scrounger page (lost tabs) and not on the bookmark converter page. The JSON for bookmarks uses {"uri": just before the bookmark URLs, in case that helps with parsing the file (but I don't have a pre-built extractor to look for those).