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A folder in Bookmarks disappeared AGAIN!

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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A folder in Bookmarks disappeared AGAIN! This is ridiculous. Every now and then Firefox loses a Bookmark folder. To make matters worse, I can waste a lot of time trying to find it and get no where. I have better things to do than trying to find lost Bookmark folders! How can I easily find the very important Bookmark folder quickly? Undo does not help.

A folder in Bookmarks disappeared AGAIN! This is ridiculous. Every now and then Firefox loses a Bookmark folder. To make matters worse, I can waste a lot of time trying to find it and get no where. I have better things to do than trying to find lost Bookmark folders! How can I easily find the very important Bookmark folder quickly? Undo does not help.

All Replies (20)

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What about the rest of your profile? Settings, bookmarks, history, passwords . . . .


If you have sync, and there is a problem anywhere, Shut Down Sync Immediately On All Devices to prevent the problem from spreading. Once the problem is fixed, perform the same repair on all computers/profiles before using sync again.


[v57+] Places Maintenance is built into Firefox.

Type about:support<enter> in the address bar.

You will find Places Database near the bottom. Press the Verify Integrity button.

When done, copy and post the results here.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-bookmarks-and-history-will-not-be-functional

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I did not see a way to post the results at the link you provided! I found out I cannot post the complete file here. In the meantime, I still cannot access a very important folder, which is very, very poor. I do not remember IE having a disappearing Favorite folder problem and I used it for many years.

How can I post the results of Verify Integrity?

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Did you try to look for a bookmark in that lost folder in case you accidentally moved it to another location ?

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Wayne Carpenter said

How can I post the results of Verify Integrity?

Using the mouse, mark the report list, then press <Control> C to copy it. Then on this forum, press <Control> V to paste it in the reply box.

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I already tried that. I wrote, "I found out I cannot post the complete file here." The following is only part of the saved Verify Integrity file!

Application Basics


Name: Firefox Version: 80.0.1 Build ID: 20200831163820 Distribution ID: Update Channel: release User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:80.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/80.0 OS: Windows_NT 10.0 19041 Launcher Process: Enabled Multiprocess Windows: 1/1 Enabled by default Remote Processes: 5 Enterprise Policies: Inactive Google Location Service Key: Found Google Safebrowsing Key: Found Mozilla Location Service Key: Found Safe Mode: false

Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days


Firefox Features


Name: DoH Roll-Out Version: 2.0.0 ID: doh-rollout@mozilla.org

Name: Firefox Screenshots Version: 39.0.0 ID: screenshots@mozilla.org

Name: Form Autofill Version: 1.0 ID: formautofill@mozilla.org

Name: Web Compat Version: 13.0.1 ID: webcompat@mozilla.org

Name: WebCompat Reporter Version: 1.3.0 ID: webcompat-reporter@mozilla.org

Remote Processes


Type: Web Content Count: 1 / 8

Type: Extension Count: 1

Type: Privileged About Count: 1

Type: Preallocated Count: 1

Type: GPU Count: 1

Add-ons


Name: Amazon.com Type: extension Version: 1.1 Enabled: true ID: amazondotcom@search.mozilla.org

Name: Bing Type: extension Version: 1.1 Enabled: true ID: bing@search.mozilla.org

Name: DuckDuckGo Type: extension Version: 1.0 Enabled: true ID: ddg@search.mozilla.org

Name: Easy Youtube Video Downloader Express Type: extension Version: 16.7 Enabled: true ID: {b9acf540-acba-11e1-8ccb-001fd0e08bd4}

Name: eBay Type: extension Version: 1.1 Enabled: true ID: ebay@search.mozilla.org

Name: Google Type: extension Version: 1.0 Enabled: true ID: google@search.mozilla.org

Name: Print Edit WE Type: extension Version: 26.6 Enabled: true ID: printedit-we@DW-dev

Name: Wikipedia (en) Type: extension Version: 1.0 Enabled: true ID: wikipedia@search.mozilla.org

Name: DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials Type: extension Version: 2020.8.18 Enabled: false ID: jid1-ZAdIEUB7XOzOJw@jetpack

Name: Price Comparison Tool from GoSale.com Type: extension Version: 2.0.4.0 Enabled: false ID: GoSale@GoSale

Security Software


Type: Microsoft Defender Antivirus

Type:

Type: Windows Firewall

Graphics


Features Compositing: WebRender Asynchronous Pan/Zoom: wheel input enabled; scrollbar drag enabled; keyboard enabled; autoscroll enabled WebGL 1 Driver WSI Info: EGL_VENDOR: Google Inc. 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For Cor-el: I have too many

cor-el said

Did you try to look for a bookmark in that lost folder in case you accidentally moved it to another location ?

If I do a search on a folder within the Parent folder that disappeared, that I can remember the name of, I get many, many hits but there is no location information, so this does not work. Firefox needs to have a way to EASILY find missing Bookmarks.

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FredMcD said

Wayne Carpenter said

How can I post the results of Verify Integrity?

Using the mouse, mark the report list, then press <Control> C to copy it. Then on this forum, press <Control> V to paste it in the reply box.

I already took quite a bit of time to respond to this, including a screenshot but for some reason, my response is NOT shown so I am starting over. As I stated earlier, "I found out I cannot post the complete file here." See attached screenshot. I made a shared link of a text file that hopefully will work. It is at: Firefox Troubleshooting Info, Lost Bookmark Folder

It is taking way too much time and work to simply include the troubleshooting info that was requested. This should be easy to do.

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There are extensions that allow to see the folder or path where the bookmarks is located. Otherwise you can open the bookmark in a tab and click the start to open the edit dialog. The second button on the Folder line open the folder tree with the folder highlighted, so you can drag the scroll thumb or use the mouse wheel to locate the folder in the tree.


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What extensions would be good to use? Doing a Search doesn't work for me so far as I don't know what the Bookmark name necessarily is for the URL. I know what some folder names may be but the Search function doesn't find folders. I did find one Bookmark but as for where it was located, it reported that is was "From Internet Explorer" which is not helpful at all as the Bookmark was in a folder that was in a folder in "From Internet Explorer."

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Bookmarks in the "From Internet Explorer" folder are bookmarks that once were imported from IE. If bookmarks show up in a search then they are still present somewhere, but if they are missing then they are removed and gone. In case of the former you would have to find out to what location (folder) they were moved and you can move them back. In case of the latter you will have to restore an older backup from the bookmarkbackups folder.


Note that point is to select the full log generated by "Verify Integrity" with the mouse and copy this selection to the clipboard and paste it in a reply or post a screenshot of the report. You can leave out the bottom part with the '+ Index ...' lines.


> Task: checkIntegrity
+ The places.sqlite database is sane
+ The favicons.sqlite database is sane
> Task: invalidateCaches
+ The caches have been invalidated
> Task: checkCoherence
+ The database is coherent

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Obviously, I found one Bookmark but it indicated that it was in "From Internet Explorer" when it was not earlier. This in in error. If I do a restore, I will lose any later added Bookmarks.

A lot of Bookmarks I see are now are at the end of the list of folders and no longer in a folder that used to be in a folder! I have no idea---hundreds, a thousand? Also, there are some folders in the list of folders under "From Internet Explorer" that used to be in another folder. Also, some folders have the same name under "From Internet Explorer" which were not there before!

This is ridiculous and is wasting my time to resolve plus this is NOT the first time this has happened.

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The "From Internet Explorer" folder would normally be present at the bottom of the Bookmarks Menu folder or possibly on the Bookmarks Toolbar, so you can check if you can find the bookmarks there. You can also create an HTML backup and open this file in a tab or open the file in a text editor and search the file for these bookmarks.

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This doesn't solve the problem so I went to Import and Backup and noticed that I lost approximately 900K of files a few days ago. I selected Restore for last Friday and now I have ONLY 5 items!!! What's going on? See attached file.

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You can try to use this tool to check the compressed .jsonlz4 backups.

If the file is corrupted then check older backup as well.

If the file is OK then you may have a problem with the places.sqlite database.


If you use Sync then best is to disconnect Sync temporarily during troubleshooting.

This can be caused by a problem with the places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite databases in the Firefox profile folder.

  • use "Verify Integrity" button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page

If errors are reported with "Verify Integrity", close and restart Firefox and retry.

If "Verify Integrity" cannot repair places.sqlite, rename/remove all places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder. Firefox will rebuild places.sqlite and restore the bookmarks from a recent JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder.

  • keep a backup copy of places.sqlite in case a new places.sqlite database has to be created

See also:

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

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I really don't like following instructions that makes things worse! Now, I really have almost no Bookmarks now compared to what I did have.

With some difficulty I finally found where the Bookmark backups are and copied the last largest file into Firefox Bookmark Backup Reader/Decompressor and got, "File name: bookmarks-2020-09-11_61456_5lDIqvQ9aOPjkqeeErmwYg==.jsonlz4; Size: 6370196; last modified 9/11/2020, 10:56:52 AM (appears to be/contain valid JSON)."

You say to use "Verify Integrity" but I already did that earlier at the suggestion of another Contributor. I did it again and got the report below so it seems to be okay. Since no errors were reported, then what is the next step?

> Task: checkIntegrity + The places.sqlite database is sane + The favicons.sqlite database is sane > Task: invalidateCaches + The caches have been invalidated > Task: checkCoherence + The database is coherent > Task: expire + Database cleaned up > Task: originFrecencyStats + Recalculated origin frecency stats > Task: vacuum + Initial database size is 76800KiB + The database has been vacuumed + Final database size is 71680KiB > Task: stats + Places.sqlite size is 71680KiB + Favicons.sqlite size is 87648KiB + pragma_user_version is 53 + pragma_page_size is 32768 + pragma_cache_size is -2048 + pragma_journal_mode is wal + pragma_synchronous is 1 + History can store a maximum of 158876 unique pages + Table moz_places has 131380 records + Table moz_historyvisits has 158901 records + Table moz_inputhistory has 74 records + Table moz_hosts has 0 records + Table moz_bookmarks has 61457 records + Table moz_bookmarks_deleted has 0 records + Table moz_keywords has 75 records + Table sqlite_sequence has 1 records + Table moz_anno_attributes has 3 records + Table moz_annos has 143 records + Table moz_items_annos has 0 records + Table sqlite_stat1 has 20 records + Table moz_meta has 6 records + Table moz_origins has 23092 records + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_hosts_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_deleted_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_origins_1 + Index moz_places_url_hashindex + Index moz_places_hostindex + Index moz_places_visitcount + Index moz_places_frecencyindex + Index moz_places_lastvisitdateindex + Index moz_places_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_historyvisits_placedateindex + Index moz_historyvisits_fromindex + Index moz_historyvisits_dateindex + Index moz_bookmarks_itemindex + Index moz_bookmarks_parentindex + Index moz_bookmarks_itemlastmodifiedindex + Index moz_bookmarks_dateaddedindex + Index moz_bookmarks_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_keywords_placepostdata_uniqueindex + Index moz_annos_placeattributeindex + Index moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex + Index moz_places_originidindex > Task: _refreshUI

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Your report shows you have 61457 bookmarks and that would indicate that you successfully restore the bookmarks from Friday.

+ Table moz_places has 131380 records
+ Table moz_historyvisits has 158901 records
+ Table moz_inputhistory has 74 records
+ Table moz_hosts has 0 records
+ Table moz_bookmarks has 61457 records

You many bookmarks do you see in the Bookmarks Manager (Library) if you type a colon (:) in the search bar with the Bookmarks selected in the left panel ?

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I checked for the total number as directed and it doesn't say but after doing more checking in Firefox, I eventually see what appears to be all of my Bookmarks as of last Friday, which is very good! I see now that the Restore list items has changed to more properly reflect the total of Bookmarks than shown yesterday. (Only 5 items were listed yesterday for some reason as I reported! Why was this?)

Interestingly, the file size for last Friday was 6.1 MB for 64,456 items and today the file size is 6.0 MB for the same number of files.

Another thing that remains unresolved is what causes Bookmark folders to disappear at times? And no, I certainly did not delete the missing folder.

Thanks

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Just in case;

Open the Bookmarks Manager; Press the Alt or F10 key to bring up the toolbar, and select Bookmarks. Hot key is <Control> (Mac=<Command>) <Shift> B.

Once the window is open, at the top of the page, press the button labeled Import and Backup. Select Export Bookmarks To HTML, and follow the prompts and save it to a HTML file. Copy the file to another computer/profile. Repeat the instructions above, BUT select Import Bookmarks From HTML.

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

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recover-lost-or-missing-bookmarks

Mozilla search: Import {web link}

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Thanks, but to back up the latest Bookmarks which appears is done every day automatically, it seems like I would have to do a manual backup at the end of every day.

Another thing that remains unresolved is what causes Bookmark folders to disappear at times? And no, I certainly did not delete the missing folder. It appears that the contents of the missing Bookmarks folder was dumped at the end of the Bookmarks in the folder titled "From Internet Explorer." This has happened several times before but with a folder that had less Bookmarks in it.

Modified by Wayne Carpenter

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There still is no resolution given to prevent the Bookmark folders from disappearing as I have expereinced. I have reported this problem before and some others have reported a Bookmark disappearing issue also.

This problem should be fixed soon and not ignored!

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