Does this help? Recover lost or missing Bookmarks

have 8 profiles i used your 1st response to discover this somehow i opened them in a new browser window found my old bookmarks and made default,fixed restarted went back to wrong profile,which was made yesterday, now i cannot open profiles in new window to make correct one default and delete bad ones

Hi Juddi, I suggest not deleting any profiles until you've gotten everything right and made a backup. It's too easy to permanently delete valuable data in the profile manager.

Changing Profiles

Inside Firefox, type or paste about:profiles in the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it.

Scroll down to the profile you want to use and click the Set as default profile button below it.

Then scroll back up and click the Restart normally button.

Recovering Bookmarks After a Firefox Refresh

(A) Turn on display of the Bookmarks Toolbar.

The toolbar list is available using any of these:

• right-click (on Mac Ctrl+click) a blank spot on the tab bar (or the "+" button)
• (menu bar) View > Toolbars
  On Windows, tap the Alt key to activate the menu bar temporarily.
• in Customize mode > Toolbars button (see: Customize Firefox controls, buttons and toolbars)

To turn on the Bookmarks Toolbar or Menu Bar, click it on the list.

(B) Use the "Choose File" feature on the Restore menu

This article will get you to that menu: Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer

After clicking "Choose File", point Firefox to your Windows desktop, then into Old Firefox Data, then into your most recent pre-Refresh profile folder, then into the bookmarkbackups folder. Then you should be able to select a file to restore. Each has the date and number of items coded into the name, so you should be able to select the most recent or promising on that basis.

Success?

The OPML file was created by Firefox 64 as a way to transfer your "Live Bookmarks" (RSS feeds saved as bookmark folders) to a different feed reader. See: Feed reader replacements for Firefox.

i put about profiles in add bar but it will only show the current default browser which is wrong sorry about my confusion

Hi Juddi, are you saying the list of profiles on the about:profiles page shows one profile, and none of the other ones you saw before?

Do you recall where you saw the others -- was it within Firefox, or on disk in the Old Firefox Data folder, or somewhere else?

Anyway, is your current profile workable except that it needs bookmarks restored? If so, that's the next step in my earlier post.

i opened the windows button in bottom left and placed a copy of something i got off of your items did not hit enter and i think 8 profiles appeared in the menu

the current browser is very different than the original

Juddi said

i opened the windows button in bottom left and placed a copy of something i got off of your items did not hit enter and i think 8 profiles appeared in the menu

Aha, I think it was:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

So how do you make Firefox see them... There is a file in

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox

called Profiles.ini which is the list of profiles Firefox is aware of.

IMPORTANT: Turn off extension hiding to see the .ini file extension:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-show-file-extensions-in-windows/

You can close Firefox and then right-click > Rename Profiles.ini to ProfilesOLD.ini (make sure to rename the settings file, and not the Profiles folder!)

At the next startup, Firefox should generate a new Profiles.ini file with all the folders in

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Then Firefox should ask which one you want to use as your default. You can pick one here, and then in Firefox, use the about:profiles page to more easily switch among them.

Juddi said

the current browser is very different than the original

If none of the profiles end up being "close enough," check the following thread for steps to use all of the Old Firefox Data:

I did a Reset of Firefox - How do i get add my 'Old firefox data' back?

we uninstalled current version and went with earlier version went to old data files bookmarks are back life is good thank you for all your help you have a great holiday season again thank you very much your friend Zack