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Restored Bookmarks Not Returning to Original Folders

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 15 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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I accidentally deleted some bookmarks today, so I decided to delete *all* bookmarks and restore *all* from an automatic backup, which I have never had to do before. When restoring yesterday's bookmarks backup, they were *all* placed in only one folder (I have about 12 folders), and in reverse order! Is the only solution to move them in groups to the correct folders and then painstakingly reorder them? There must be a better way...

I accidentally deleted some bookmarks today, so I decided to delete *all* bookmarks and restore *all* from an automatic backup, which I have never had to do before. When restoring yesterday's bookmarks backup, they were *all* placed in only one folder (I have about 12 folders), and in reverse order! Is the only solution to move them in groups to the correct folders and then painstakingly reorder them? There must be a better way...

All Replies (3)

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Are you using Sync to sync the bookmarks ?

Did you try to restore an older compressed .jsonlz4 backup in the bookmarkbackups folder ?

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To my knowledge, I'm not using Sync. I only use Firefox on one device. And yes, I followed these instructions to restore a recent automatic backup. Is there a difference between a "compressed" file and regular backup?

Also, should I delete the empty folders on my Bookmarks Toolbar before restoring the files? Is this why the restore isn't working properly?

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No, there is no difference between a compressed jsonlz4 backup and a backup you created yourself. The automatically created backups are compressed to save space as there can be quite a few (15 by default as set via browser.bookmarks.max_backups). Restoring a JSON backup always replace all current bookmarks, so there is no need to delete current bookmarks. If restoring isn't working then this is more likely a problem with places.sqlite or the file is corrupted.

You can use this tool to inspect a (compressed) JSON backup.