Bookmark Folders in New Release All Closed
I upgraded o FF Rel 67.0.2 and it is just a pain after a pain. Things were changed but not for the better. The first problem I had with bookmarks was resolved by a nice, helpful person on this forum. But I have more bookmark problems.
1) All of the bookmark folders that had been open in the previous release I was on were all closed after the upgrade. Now I can't scroll down the bookmarks ("Show All Bookmarks") to find what I want as all of the folders were closed and I couldn't see what was in them, not the entries nor the sub-folders. I have been going through the annoying and time consuming process of going to each folder one at a time and opening it again. Is there some way to fix this awful FF upgrade "feature" and open all of the bookmark folders at one time?
2) Even though I I've been manually going through the bookmark folders (in "Show all bookmarks") to open them, when I use Ctl-D to bookmark a URL the folders are still closed. So I can't see what similar URL was saved where. Nor can I see the sub-folders. So question #2: is there a way to force FF to re-open all folders (and show the sub-folders) in the Ctl-D function when it displays the bookmark folder list without having to manually open each folder a second time in the CTl-D function?.
All Replies (4)
You only see a folder list in the Edit This Bookmark dialog if you click the second arrow outside the folder field.
In the Bookmarks Manager (Library) the panel on the left only shows folder names and you need to select a folder in the left panel to inspect its content in the right panel. You can use the bookmarks sidebar (Ctrl+B) to see folders and their content.
You can add the "Bookmarks Menu" button that shows the bookmarks in a drop-down list to the Navigation Toolbar via these steps:
- click the bookshelf
icon on the Navigation Toolbar or alternatively use the Library menu in the "3-bar" Firefox menu button 
drop-down list
- click Bookmarks
- click "Bookmarking Tools", then click "Add Bookmarks Menu to Toolbar"
should appear on the Navigation Toolbar.
You can also drag the Bookmarks Menu button from the Customize palette to the Navigation Toolbar
See also "How do I add the Bookmarks Menu button to the toolbar?":
Thank you cor-el for taking the time to respond to my post. I appreciate each time you offer your help.
However, how to see the folders' contents was not the point of my post. Many, if not most, of these bookmark folders WERE OPEN before I upgraded FF to Rel 67.0.2. The FF upgrade CLOSED all of them. I know that selecting the sideways arrow opens up the folder to show sub-folders and other contents. The bug here is that the upgrade should NOT have closed those folders that were left open. They should have been left as they were - opened (in my case) or closed. The same is true for the "edit this bookmark" dialog.
Other non-FF software upgrades allow settings to remain as they had been. They just slide them into the new release without requiring re-entering them. The BAD (BAD = Broken As Designed) bookmark upgrade code should have done the same thing. I should not have to go back and MANUALLY RE-OPEN all of these bookmark folders, which over the course of their use I had opened and purposely left open so that I could easily see and find sub-folders and contents.
I appreciate your trying to help me to find the folders contents. The problem here is in the FF upgrade installation design that disregarded the open/closed status of each folder .
The xulstore.json file stores the open/collapse state of some bookmark folders, so it is possible that this file got reset or you may have switched to a new profile and this files wasn't migrated.
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dedicated-profiles-firefox-installation
- https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2019/01/14/moving-to-a-profile-per-install-architecture/
(edit: fixed Nightly Blog link)
Modified by cor-el
Thank you cor-el for the information and explanation, and for once again helping (by the way that second URL is a dead link). I did not knowingly change any profile unless FF made that change under-the-covers during the upgrade. And clearly what they wrote on the first website to which you pointed "You will not lose any personal data or customizations. Any previous profile data is saved and associated with the first Firefox installation that was opened after this change" is simply not true. They ARE lost! I now have to open every folder when I save a bookmark to search for an existing sub-folder to which that bookmark should go. And if I don't waste all this time looking for the existing sub-folder but instead make a "new" one, I wind up with duplicately named sub-folders! And then don't which URL entries are in which folder.
My rule is to never upgrade PC software unless the release I'm using is broken or causing problems (unless I can easily back-out the upgrade if I need to). PC software vendors - unlike mainframe software vendors e.g. IBM - generally don't care about how what they've changed affects users (Microsoft is the most arrogant in that respect; apparently Mozilla is now following suit) and then I'm stuck with features/functions either missing, "working" completely differently or just failing, with no recourse. My "no upgrade" rule got broken because a friend was troubleshooting a problem on my machine, I was distracted and he upgraded FF.
I still can't run a major anti-virus software months after I upgraded it ("You are out of date and your machine is vulnerable - upgrade now") and it has no ability to downgrade/regress to an earlier release that worked. Just an example of why I have my "no upgrade unless absolutely necessary" rule.