Hi, if you want to copy bookmarks from another computer, you can try using Sync: How do I set up Sync on my computer?.

Or, plug a USB flash drive into your old machine, then in Firefox, open bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks > Import and Backup > Export Bookmarks to HTML. Or > Backup, but note that Backup will overwrite any existing bookmarks when you restore them. Now save to the flash drive.

You can now plug the flash drive into your new machine and in Firefox, open bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks > Import and Backup > Import Bookmarks from HTML. Or > Restore (from Backup), and navigate to the flash drive. More: Import data from another browser.

If your question is resolved by this or another answer, please take a minute to let us know. Thank you!

I think I have a slightly different problem. I deleted a Firefox version without exporting my bookmarks to a HTML file first. Then, I installed the new version and all my bookmarks are gone : ( Is there any way I can find / retrieve them again?

In my case I didn't delete firefox but clicked update ( via Avast which said it was out of date). The update failed, my previous version is now no longer there and the location (C:apps/mozilla/ etc) which is supposed to contain the bookmarks seperate to the firefox installation, has folders but no bookmarks content apparently. Really annoyed with Firefox / Avast . Pretty shoddy all round. . . . Any ideas on recovery anyone ?

Hi adriana.mambo, normally uninstalling Firefox doesn't delete your profile folder(s). If you use a third party uninstaller, it may have removed the data, too, in which case, the following won't help.

Profile Check

When you install the same or newer version of Firefox, it should automatically find your old profile folder with your data and re-use it. If you install an older version or a different "channel" (such as the Developer Edition instead of the regular release) then Firefox would create a new profile.

If you haven't already, could you close out of Firefox and do a normal systme shutdown and restart to complete any pending updates and release any file locks.

If Firefox again starts up without your data, could you check whether your stuff is available in a different profile, as follows:

Profile Manager Page

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

This page should list at least one profile and could list many. (Each profile has two folders and one or more buttons. Do not use any Remove buttons!)

The profile that Firefox is currently using will have this:

This is the profile in use and it cannot be deleted.

Do you have another profile named default or default-longnumber listed on this page? If so, you can check whether it is the one you were using recently by clicking its Launch profile in new browser button.

If it isn't what you want, simply close that new window.

If it IS what you want, back on the about:profiles page, click the Set as default profile button for that profile so Firefox uses it automatically at the next startup.

Any progress so far?

Other Sources -- Windows

If the files are nowhere to be found, other things you could try are:

Deleted File Recovery

A tool like Recuva can recover some erased files. This could be useful to track down recently removed session history files. Make sure Windows is set to show hidden files and folders:

• https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files
• https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

Within each profile folder, you should find a folder named bookmarkbackups with files whose names start with

bookmarks-2019-

followed by the rest of the date, the number of items, and a hash value, with a .jsonlz4 file extensions.

BEWARE: recovered files may be corrupted with nonsense data, and this problem becomes worse as time passes since the file was deleted.

Shadow Copies

You can use a utility program to search inside restore points to try to locate an old file that's usable. (Please do NOT try to use the built-in Windows System Restore for this because you probably would lose data.)

(1) Set Windows to show hidden files and folders:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files

(2) Download and run one of these two programs:

• ShadowExplorer: http://www.shadowexplorer.com/
• System Restore Explorer: http://nicbedford.co.uk/software/systemrestoreexplorer/

Within the most recent restore point shown in the program, you can explore along this path to see whether you can find a shadow copy of your profile:

\Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

(3) Check in the bookmarkbackups folder of each profile for older backups. You can export interesting files to a convenient location such as your currently live desktop.

Any luck?

Hi luineach, how many profile folders do you have? You can use this "shortcut" path to load the hidden folder:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

then you'll recognize the pattern that profiles are generally named with several random characters, then a dot, then readable text. Each folder should have a bookmarkbackups folder.

To unhide the AppData folder: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files