I have 7500 bookmarks under Unsorted Bookmarks, most for Real Player, how do I get rid of them
I cannot delete the Unsorted Bookmarks folder (delete is grayed out, as is Cut) and it has literally thousands of entries. I rarely if ever use the star so they must be being added automatically. Most of the entries are "Real Player Home Page." I think this huge number of (useless to me) bookmarks is affecting the Sync function as it keeps telling me it has encountered an error.
Until recently I was using Xmarks but that, too, has stopped functioning.
I am at a loss as to what to do to get rid of all those bookmarks under the UB folder.
Chosen solution
OnTheRoad41 said
Can I just edit the bookmarks html file to delete the innumerable references to RealPlayer? There are innumerable of these: ....
Rather than using an HTML editor program to edit the bookmarks.html file, you could open that file in Firefox (like a webpage) and use the edit page bookmarklet. https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/misc.html#edit_page the guy - Jesse - who created that website in 2000 is a Mozilla developer - that bookmarklet still works to delete page content which is highlighted by using the Delete key - I have used it dozens of times over the years to "edit" a bookmarks.html file and remove hundreds of contiguous lines of bookmarks in "one fell swoop", or separate groupings of bookmarks When you are done "editing" just make sure you save that "edited" bookmarks.html file.
As far as how that problem started, using Xmarks and Sync together was the prescription for disaster. And using Bookmark Deduplicator while Sync was still "connected" to that Profile just "dribbled" those duplicates back into that Profile as you described happening.
I used Deduplicator and it removed 53,548 duplicates! BUT as soon as I opened Unsorted Bookmarks it was repopulated with some huge number of RealPlayer Home Page bookmarks. I could actually watch the little bar marker on the left getting smaller and smaller as it repopulated. Something weird is going on.
As you are working towards getting rid of those "duplicates" - either by using the Bookmark Deduplicator extension or by editing a bookmarks.html file for import into a new Profile, make sure Sync is Disconnected and that you change you Sync password to clear your data from the Sync server before you connect back to your Sync account. Otherwise this problem will just reappear again and again.
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cor-el said
You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox profile folder.
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_history_and_toolbar_buttons_not_working_-_Firefox
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file
- Places Maintenance: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/
I looked at the first two last night but was too tired to try much and added the maintenance add on. I let it run all night and nothing happened. I tried a couple of setting but no go. Thanks for trying.
Modified by OnTheRoad41
John99 said
Sync is notorious for occasionally messing up bookmarks. Sync is also unable to cope with anything like your number of bookmarks. You probably have no chance of clearing up this issue if bookmarks are set to be Synced with Firefox Sync.
Believe me, I have NO desire to have that many bookmarks nor do I have any idea how that many were created!
Can I just edit the bookmarks html file to delete the innumerable references to RealPlayer? There are innumerable of these:
Home Page</A>
OnTheRoad41 said
Can I just edit the bookmarks html file to delete the innumerable references to RealPlayer?
You could, but unless you have a great editor that will help you efficiently remove all the tags that contain the links, the file might end up corrupted. Using a second profile to do the cleanup and deduplication probably would be faster.
Chosen Solution
OnTheRoad41 said
Can I just edit the bookmarks html file to delete the innumerable references to RealPlayer? There are innumerable of these: ....
Rather than using an HTML editor program to edit the bookmarks.html file, you could open that file in Firefox (like a webpage) and use the edit page bookmarklet. https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/misc.html#edit_page the guy - Jesse - who created that website in 2000 is a Mozilla developer - that bookmarklet still works to delete page content which is highlighted by using the Delete key - I have used it dozens of times over the years to "edit" a bookmarks.html file and remove hundreds of contiguous lines of bookmarks in "one fell swoop", or separate groupings of bookmarks When you are done "editing" just make sure you save that "edited" bookmarks.html file.
As far as how that problem started, using Xmarks and Sync together was the prescription for disaster. And using Bookmark Deduplicator while Sync was still "connected" to that Profile just "dribbled" those duplicates back into that Profile as you described happening.
I used Deduplicator and it removed 53,548 duplicates! BUT as soon as I opened Unsorted Bookmarks it was repopulated with some huge number of RealPlayer Home Page bookmarks. I could actually watch the little bar marker on the left getting smaller and smaller as it repopulated. Something weird is going on.
As you are working towards getting rid of those "duplicates" - either by using the Bookmark Deduplicator extension or by editing a bookmarks.html file for import into a new Profile, make sure Sync is Disconnected and that you change you Sync password to clear your data from the Sync server before you connect back to your Sync account. Otherwise this problem will just reappear again and again.
OK! Solved my problem, at least temporarily. Meaning I have a reasonable number of bookmarks, NO bookmarks from RealPlayer and only 4 entries under unsorted bookmarks. I still don't know WHY the multitudinous bookmarks happened but I do know that it happened sometime between 8:20p and 10:26p on 3/7/15.
I went back to xmarks (which I had disabled) and began to look for a set of bookmarks that were a reasonable size. I narrowed it down to 8:20p 3/7 was good and the backup set at 10:26p had thousands more bookmarks.
I disabled Sync in FF. I then restored the set from xmarks from 8:20p telling it to discard the bookmarks on the computer and use the ones on the server. It worked!
I will leave FF Sync off and use xmarks and see what happens as I use my computer. I'll let all you wonderful folks who helped me know if it happens again. We've been travelling for 4 months and using a different browser and computer which is why I probably didn't notice anything except that xmarks seemed to be hung up.