Formatted my comp. Imported my bookmarks html file to Firefox and now only some bookmarks are displayed. How to fix this?
I've tried looking up some suggested fixes and problems similar to my situation, and I've tried the backup folder, maintenance app fix, places.sql deleting and restore JSON file fix. None of which seemed to completely restore my old bookmark list.
I just recently formatted my comp from Win Xp to Win 7 and had Firefox 21 installed. I tried to import my old firefox bookmarks from an html file I made before reformatting, but only a few of the bookmarks appear/display. The majority of my old bookmarks are gone. Has anyone else had this problem? Can anyone please share any fixes or suggestions they tried? Thanks.
All Replies (4)
Do you actually have Firefox 18, or is that a glitch in how the forum detected your Firefox version?
If you open bookmarks.html in a Firefox tab, does it seem more complete than what actually got imported, or did the import find everything in the file?
You mentioned looking in the bookmarkbackups folder at the JSON files. Do you have a copy of your old bookmarkbackups folder? (The new one isn't going to be of any use to you.)
As with Windows XP, Windows 7 hides hidden files and folders. To make sure those can be viewed in Windows Explorer and found in searches, you can turn off hiding using the steps in this article: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hidden-files
Sorry, I initially had Firefox 21 after I reformatted my comp to Win 7, then after reading some people's suggested fixes, I tried downgrading to Firefox 18. Still didn't fix it.
No, I sadly don't have a copy of my old bookmarks backup folder. I thought my bookmarks.html file would have been enough. This problem never happened to me before so that's why I didn't save my old bookmarks backup before reformatting.
Ok, I have just installed Firefox 32 beta in order to install bookmarks.html (since it's not available for Firefox 18) and it looks like it just showed all the bookmarks that managed to get imported, but still not the complete list I had before.
I'm not sure what showing all the hidden files on Windows Explorer does, but I went and did as you suggested.
I'm sorry to hear that your bookmarks.html file is not complete. When you use the Export feature manually (support article), it should create a complete file.
(There may be old bookmarks.html files lying around for other reasons, and those may be ancient or partial sets.)
At this point, unfortunately, there's no way to figure out why the file wasn't complete (for example, the exporter might have choked on particular characters in a bookmark title or something else??).
If your reinstall of Windows created a C:\Windows.old\ folder, your old bookmarkbackups folder usually would be in there along with your other Firefox settings. However, if you formatted the disk the old fashioned way, that folder probably doesn't exist.
Yeah, I reformatted the old school way. Yeah, I come to terms with knowing I've lost most of my bookmarks. This was a sad day for me, but at least it wasn't a total loss. Thanks for the help and replies. Even if I didn't get my bookmarks back, having someone help me with understanding the situation helped a lot. Again, thanks.