Bookmarks restoration from backups
This morning (first thing!) I had a cat partially lay and the keyboard, with my bookmarks "History" open, and, before I could remove her, she pressed the Delete key on the numeric keypad and deleted several bookmarks in rapid succession. After a few seconds of debate with myself, I elected to use the "Restore" feature under "Import and Backup" and restore the previous day's bookmarks.
There's a little detail, though. For whatever reason, the majority of my bookmarks (all the *current* ones) are under "Other Bookmarks", which I assumed was of no matter. However, after the restoration was complete, I noticed that while all bookmarks under "Bookmarks Menu" were restored, the "Other Bookmarks" folder was empty. In actual effect, ALL my bookmarks are missing!
I followed advice posted at the Mozilla support forum (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1355129) and used a tool (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1355129#answer-1453428) to view the contents of my previous day's JSON backup file, and it *does* indeed contain references to the last pages visited that day. However, after doing a backup with that particular compressed JSON file, the contents of the folder "Other Bookmarks" was NOT regenerated, and it's NOT in the restored "Bookmarks Menu" folder either (only old stuff). And I've just noticed that my "Bookmarks Toolbar" (which contained numerous entries) was not restored either.
I need some guidance at this point. The compressed JSON backup file evidently contains the backed up data (including, I assume, the "Bookmarks Toolbar" data). I can't restore it.
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Oh no, sorry to hear about this problem.
Preliminary question: do you use the add-on "Default Bookmark Folder"? If you do, you need to disable it before doing a Restore or Import because unfortunately, the extension cannot distinguish between you adding a bookmark and a bulk operation like a Restore or Import and it will dutifully move everything from its expected location to the specified folder.
In the Library window (Ctrl+Shift+O), if you use the small search box at the upper right to look for one of your missing bookmarks, does Firefox show it is "somewhere"? If so, you can right-click > Show in Folder on the search result and the left panel should expand and highlight the current location. Unfortunately, at least for me, I still need to scroll that panel to find it. Are the missing bookmarks misplaced or completely absent?
Note that you probably can use "Organize -> Undo" in the Library multiple times to recover from the delete if you haven't closed Firefox as Firefox keeps a full undo stack for the current session.
jscher2000:
No, I don't have the add-on "Default Bookmark Folder" installed. And the bookmarks in question seem to be missing (absent) entirely. I'll have to try to remember a likely bookmark to test your "Library window" suggestion. I'll let you know shortly the outcome.
cor-el: Wish I'd been aware of that. Sadly, Firefox did close. Actually, that could be a little datum: it crashed. But I repeated the restore process to no avail, yielding only the restoration of the old bookmarks under the "Bookmarks Menu" folder. But as I stated, I do see the last bookmarks added, using the Firefox Bookmark Backup Reader/Decompressor tool on the previous (yesterday's) compressed JSON backup file.
You could try importing the converted file (the bookbackreader page lets you generate an importable HTML file, for this process: Import Bookmarks from an HTML file). Unfortunately, this will duplicate the ones that you were able to restore earlier using the built-in Restore feature. However, depending on the number of duplicates, it might be the simplest approach.
jscher2000:
I pasted a recent bookmark into the Library window search box and it was not found.
Any idea why the compressed backup JSON file is not regenerating my bookmarks in their entirety??
aandrews said
Any idea why the compressed backup JSON file is not regenerating my bookmarks in their entirety??
No, but you could open the Browser Console window (Ctrl+Shift+J), click the trash can icon to clear clutter, then try the Restore again and see whether any relevant-sounding messages are logged.
Note that the Restore will clear what you have now; it doesn't preserve or duplicate anything when applying the backup.
jscher2000: Sorry for the delay responding back; it took me forever to find this URL! I imported the converted-to-html file (of the most recent JSON file) and it failed to regenerate my bookmarks. So, in effect, I've lost my bookmarks. Don't get me wrong: I'm not blaming your suggest whatsoever. It's just the the compressed JSON backup files as backup files are garbage, in my opinion.
I'm not new to this by any stretch. I run Debian and my traditional method for backing up my bookmarks is to copy places.sqlite to a backup location. Last December, when I decided to finally update to Bullseye (Deb11), I decided to reorganized the partition on my primary drive and rsync'd my entire home directory to my 6TB secondary drive. So, I have the places.sqlite file from then available. I'll probably just drag it to the .mozilla folder in my home directory after I fume about this for a while longer and forget about the lost bookmarks that had accumulated. Everything will be restored including my Toolbar bookmarks (such as they were in December).
I've used Firefox forever, but I'd never used the compressed JSON backup files to actually try to recover bookmarks. I blame myself for trusting it, like an idiot. I defend Firefox to naysayers by saying, It's how Firefox handles bookmarks is why I stick with Firefox. Which is true, and it's probably also the case for a legion of other users. Mozilla should take that to heart and come up with a *bulletproof* backup system. In my opinion, bookmarks are the heart of a browser. If they can't be properly and securely managed, the browser's crap.
For me, I've gotten religion. As a Linux user, I'm going to set up a cron job to automatically periodically back up places.sqlite to my secondary drive. THAT is the fail proof method.
aandrews said
I imported the converted-to-html file (of the most recent JSON file) and it failed to regenerate my bookmarks. So, in effect, I've lost my bookmarks.
If you open the generated bookmarks.html file, does it look correct there?
You can try to create a new (test) profile and try to restore a compressed .jsonlz4 backup from the bookmarkbackups folder. If that works then you can create an HTML backup with that new profile.
jscher2000: No, it's missing a bunch of content. Anyway...lesson learned (!).
Thanks so much jscher2000! Was able to undo a messed up restore I had done with "Default Bookmark Folder" enabled. Just deleted all bookmarks, disabled "Default Bookmark Folder", and restored from older backup, then re-enabled "Default Bookmark Folder". Thanks!