Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Lost all bookmarks after reseting password

  • 5 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 45 views
  • Last reply by FredMcD

more options

My account may have been compromised and I was locked out. So I reset my password, but lost all of my bookmarks. Is there anyway to retrieve those?

My account may have been compromised and I was locked out. So I reset my password, but lost all of my bookmarks. Is there anyway to retrieve those?

Chosen solution

Changing your Firefox Account password removes any data that was stored on Firefox Sync. The data cannot be recovered.

This is due to a technical limitation of how encryption works. So that your data is not sitting on the Firefox Sync servers in a format that people can read, it's encrypted using your account password. If your account password changes, it will not longer match the password needed to decrypt the data, making that data useless. Contrary to popular belief, the Firefox Account system has no idea what your password actually is, so there's no way for it to move that data to the new password.

However, changing your account password will not delete any data already saved on your computer. If you still have a Firefox installation with your bookmarks and other data in it, you can recover it from that device.

Hope this helps.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (5)

more options

Chosen Solution

Changing your Firefox Account password removes any data that was stored on Firefox Sync. The data cannot be recovered.

This is due to a technical limitation of how encryption works. So that your data is not sitting on the Firefox Sync servers in a format that people can read, it's encrypted using your account password. If your account password changes, it will not longer match the password needed to decrypt the data, making that data useless. Contrary to popular belief, the Firefox Account system has no idea what your password actually is, so there's no way for it to move that data to the new password.

However, changing your account password will not delete any data already saved on your computer. If you still have a Firefox installation with your bookmarks and other data in it, you can recover it from that device.

Hope this helps.

more options

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


Restore Bookmark Backups

Firefox automatically makes backups of the bookmarks. These are stored in the bookmarkbackups folder.

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 Restore. From the list, pick the file you want and click it.

The backups are stored in a jsonlz4 file named something like this;
bookmarks-2016-06-29_1424_enD1GTH ya0JmicnYWg4V4g==.jsonlz4

In this example; 2016-06-29 = date created, 1424 = number of entries.

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

https://support.mozilla.org/kb/forum-response-recover-bookmarks-after-update

more options

Changing the password of the Firefox Account shouldn't affect data stored in the profile folder.

Do you have backups in the bookmarkbackups folder ?

more options

Thanks to everyone that answered. I was able to download a back-up from a different workstation, and upload it to my primary workstation.

more options

Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles {web link} I use an add-on that makes backups of my user profile, Just In Case. Unfortunately, it is not compatible with the current Firefox.

Every now and then, open the profile folder and create a copy of the current profile as is to another location on your hard drive. This way you will have a backup.

If you do this each day, you will not lose much data. This should be done with Firefox Closed.

Note: In case you need to restore from these backups, you may need to overwrite old or corrupted files.