You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox profile folder.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_history_and_toolbar_buttons_not_working_-_Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file

• Places Maintenance: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

Hi, again.

No joy. I have tried deleting the places.sqlite database file and restarting Firefox without any change. The file still shows 10kb content, so I believe my bookmarks are still extant. There were a couple of additional facts that came to me after my question was already posted:

1. The screen that comes up if I open additional windows online usually has my most frequently viewed sites listed like a cascade of large buttons. Almost all my fvs have disappeared, replaced by Firefox random sites.
2. Today, I attempted to navigate back to my question via the bookmark I placed yesterday. It is nowhere in evidence.

There was an optional suggestion to delete a sqlite file that contains changes I have made to the toolbar - do you think that is relevant to the problem at hand? (Would that affect things I have added to the toolbar, Priceblink for instance?)

Try to restore an older JSON backup. Firefox shows the number of bookmarks in each backup, so you can select the most promising recent backup.

• Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks > Import & Backup > Restore > Choose File
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

Hi, As I said in my first post, I tried to restore to an earlier backup with the most bookmarks. Would that it had worked. I tried it again today, actually, hoping that my fresh reboot might have shaken things loose. I get the same message, "Unable to process the backup file." So I'm back to cluelessness.

"Unable to process the backup file" might mean two things, either the places.sqlite file is corrupt or the JSON backup is corrupted or you try to restore an old backup that it isn't compatible with the current release.

You could try to delete all places file and then try again. Unfortunately the automatically created JSON backups are in a compressed .jsonlz4 format are can't be checked apart from seeing if they at least have some random binary data and not long repeating sequences. Manually created backup are at least in text (ASCII) format, so you can check them and if necessary retrieve some data.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unable_to_process_the_backup_file_-_Firefox

OK, so what I've done now is open the places.sqlite file and copied the contents utilizing Wordpad into a Word file. As a result, I can see the (almost) complete list of bookmarkswith their names, along with computerspeak gibberish that I don't know. None of my descriptors, etc, are evident in the file. But now I at least have a list of bookmarks, albeit a tremendously unwieldy formatted one (one bookmark per page, 1870 bookmarks). It is something, though far from ideal.

Another thing - for future reference, is there any way to save my bookmarks in Firefox to a file external to FF, so that I can periodically back them up against this happening again?

Hi, you can back them up to your PC like this: Open bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks > Import and Backup > Export Bookmarks to HTML, then save them to somewhere on your PC, such as Documents.

For even greater security, you can then copy them to a removable drive, such as a USB flash drive, then if your PC fails, you will still have them.

Thank you, Scribe_uk. While this does not address the issue of my missing bookmarks, it does help me preserve the ones I have and the ones I will collect in future, so it is very welcome advice.