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Having trouble restoring/importing my bookmarks from my old computer to my new computer from a .json file. Can someone help me?

gymnast20
gymnast20
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I want to restore/import my bookmarks from my old computer (which had to have a clean Windows 10 install, so there's no going back to that) to my new computer. I had saved my bookmarks as a .json file, which I have, but Firefox won't restore/import the bookmarks. I have the latest version of Firefox, and I had the latest version when I saved the .json file. It just says that it's unable to process the backup file (or something along those lines, but of course I can't even get the error message to come back now, lol).

I didn't think it would be such a problem to backup your bookmarks to the format they tell you and then try to restore them.

I don't know what to do. Has anyone figured this out?

I want to restore/import my bookmarks from my old computer (which had to have a clean Windows 10 install, so there's no going back to that) to my new computer. I had saved my bookmarks as a .json file, which I have, but Firefox won't restore/import the bookmarks. I have the latest version of Firefox, and I had the latest version when I saved the .json file. It just says that it's unable to process the backup file (or something along those lines, but of course I can't even get the error message to come back now, lol). I didn't think it would be such a problem to backup your bookmarks to the format they tell you and then try to restore them. I don't know what to do. Has anyone figured this out?

All Replies (3)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Unfortunately, the error messages given by Firefox are too vague to determine the specific issue. In some versions (not sure about 57.0.3) there is a bug related to missing or zero dates. I have a tool to slightly clean up bookmark backup files:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/bookbackreader.html

Drag and drop your backup file onto the white box, then click the Save JSON button to save a version that has any blank or zero dates replaced with today's date. You also can try purging the descriptions if you don't need those. You can also do an HTML export and try importing that.

More recently, a Check/Repair JSON button was added to the page to check for and fix a problem affecting restoring in Firefox 59.

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

jeffreyjwells
jeffreyjwells
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I have a copy of my bookmarks that are a json file but I can't import them to firefox. I also have them in another computer but not sure how to copy them

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Hi jeffreyjwells, there are two different menu items in the Library window for two different formats: