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Firefox didn't save opened tabs, all history is lost, bookmarks toolbar is empty, firefox doesn't save pages visited, mozilla folder on computer is empty

  • 3 cavab
  • 3 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by nadajaffal

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Last time I used Firefox was before yesterday and before shutting my macbook down I quit firefox as usual and had around 20 tabs open like I always do. Today I opened firefox all the tabs didn't show up and I didn't get a restore option (the one you get when firefox crashes). I lost 4 years worth of bookmarks and history, bookmark toolbar, saved passwords and saved accounts!!! I searched the whole internet to fix this but nothing helped. Now when I open a tab and visit a website then click on a link and go to another website I can't even press the back button because it's not active and firefox doesn't save any of the pages I visit now after all the data is lost although the preference are set to save all visited tabs and remember history. I have version 32.0.3 of firefox and I still didn't update it because I need to empty my computer first to make space for the new update. Is there a way to restore all lost data? and fix the new problem of not saving history?

Last time I used Firefox was before yesterday and before shutting my macbook down I quit firefox as usual and had around 20 tabs open like I always do. Today I opened firefox all the tabs didn't show up and I didn't get a restore option (the one you get when firefox crashes). I lost 4 years worth of bookmarks and history, bookmark toolbar, saved passwords and saved accounts!!! I searched the whole internet to fix this but nothing helped. Now when I open a tab and visit a website then click on a link and go to another website I can't even press the back button because it's not active and firefox doesn't save any of the pages I visit now after all the data is lost although the preference are set to save all visited tabs and remember history. I have version 32.0.3 of firefox and I still didn't update it because I need to empty my computer first to make space for the new update. Is there a way to restore all lost data? and fix the new problem of not saving history?

Modified by nadajaffal

All Replies (3)

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I also tried recovering lost bookmarks as mentioned here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1009407?esab=a&as=aaq but as you can see in the photo the only .html document available in the bookmarks folder goes back to 2010 which is when I first downloaded firefox!!

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Current Firefox versions store backups in the bookmarkbackups folder. There are backup from Nov 3 and Nov 10 and older backups. The ones with the .jsonlz4 are compressed to make them smaller. Your screenshot doesn't show the full name that includes the number (xxxx) of bookmarks in each of the files.

  • bookmarks-####-##-##_xxxx_$$$$.json

On Mac you may also have a backup of the places.sqlite files in the Time Machine if you are using this.

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

  • Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)

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

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How can I use the .json files? also, that may solve the bookmarks what about the opened tabs and history? Now I can't do anything about this because Firefox is now damaged after I closed it!! I'm afraid if I download it again I will lose the last opportunity to recover the lost files!! any suggestions?