Hi memcneill, sorry to hear about this problem.

Firefox's "Refresh" feature should have moved all your old Firefox data to your Windows desktop inside a folder named Old Firefox Data. Do you see that folder on your desktop?

Assuming you have the Old Firefox Data folder:

Before restoring a backup:

Make sure the bookmarks are completely missing. Sometimes the problem is that bars and button are hidden and you still have your data. Here are the steps to restore those toolbar elements:

(A) Bookmarks Toolbar

Use one of these methods to show the toolbar list and select the desired bars there:

• 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, Menu Bar, or other bars, click it on the list.

(B) Bookmarks Menu toolbar button

You can add the optional bookmarks menu button () using either:

• The Customize panel (Customize Firefox controls, buttons and toolbars) -- drag the icon to the desired spot on the toolbar

• The method from Bookmarks in Firefox - section entitled: How do I add the Bookmarks Menu button to the toolbar?
  • Click the "Library" button:
  • Click "Bookmarks"
  • Click "Bookmarking Tools"
  • Click "Add Bookmarks Menu to Toolbar"

Restoring a bookmark backup:

This will completely replace the current set of bookmarks.

This article has the steps to call up the Restore menu: Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer.

At the bottom of that menu is the "Choose File..." item. Click that, then point Firefox to your desktop and:

• double-click into Old Firefox Data
• double-click into your old profile folder, whose name usually has a random part, then a dot, then a text part. For example: a1b2c3d4.default
• double-click into the bookmarkbackups folder

Firefox should show files with names like:

bookmarks-2018-10-16_6186_gibberish==.jsonlz4

So they have the date of the backup, and the number of items (bookmarks + folders). Double-click the one you want to restore.

Success?

Note: .jsonlz4 files are compressed, so you can't view them directly in other programs. They are only meant to be used through the Restore menu.

Gosh, I should read more carefully!

memcneill said

I followed the instructions and got the message: "Unable to process the backup file."

You can try this alternate approach: convert one of your backups files to an HTML-format file and then use the "Import" feature to add those bookmarks.

Selecting a File to Convert

This may be either in your current profile folder, or in the Old Firefox Data folder.

(A) From your current profile folder

If the Restore menu lists the backup you want to use, go ahead and locate that in your currently live profile folder as follows:

Open your currently live Firefox profile folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, on the Profile Folder row, click the "Open Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.

Double-click into the bookmarkbackups folder.

(B) From an Old Firefox Data folder

Please see the earlier reply

Convert the File

Open this page from my site in Firefox:

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

Resize the Windows Explorer window so you can see the white box in that page behind it, and drag-and-drop a backup file onto the page.

Then try the Export HTML button to save an HTML version of the file to a convenient location.

Import the Bookmarks HTML file

This article has the steps: Import Bookmarks from an HTML file

Success?

Thanks so much!