Where were you told to create a new profile and have you got the old one ?

As long a you have the old profiles safe you will be able to get the bookmarks back. If you did a firefox Refresh a copy of the old profile should be on the desktop.

• See Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

To find your current profile

• Use: Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory: [Show Folder] (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)
• See: Profiles - Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data_how-do-i-find-my-profile

Find your current profile. Then close Firefox. Find the original profile or a copy of it. Copy the original file places.sqlite and use that to replace the places.sqlite in the current profile. Open Firefox again and it will have the bookmarks and History from the previous profile.

• See also Recovering important data from an old profile

Thanks for the info. I took the places.sqlite document from the profile in the 'Old Firefox Data' folder on the desktop and replaced the newer profile. But there are no bookmarks after opening Firefox. This may be a related issue - bookmarks are lost every time I restart Firefox.

Did you try to replace the profile or just the single file places.sqlite ?

I had only intended you to replace places.sqlite

If you tried to overwrite the whole profile Firefox would have been confused: it would fail to find the current profile, it would not recognise the new copy, it would generate a new default profile with a slightly different name (the leading characters in the directory name change)

If that is what happened just repeat the process, and at least initially only copy over places.sqlite.

Not sure exactly what you looked at when you say

 a related issue - bookmarks are lost every time I restart Firefox.

However for now as we know you created a new profile, apparently by resetting Firefox and lost bookmarks in the process I am hoping the old profile copy on the desktop has valid bookmarks in it.

Do not destroy any profiles or copies of profiles, there are other files that may have bookmarks in them.

Presumably bookmarks were working ok prior to you using a new profile. Any idea roughly how many bookmarks you had ? tens, hundreds, many hundreds

What sizes are the places.sqlite files you have ?

Also see

• Recover lost or missing Bookmarks
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks

Do you have other computers or devices with Firefox bookmarks on ?

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database (bookmarks, history) in the Firefox profile folder.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

See also:

• 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

Did you try to restore a JSON backup from the bookmarkbackups folder?

The name of a JSON bookmarks backup file includes a total item count (folders and separators included) and an hash value to prevent saving the same backup more than once.

• bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD_<item count>_<hash>.jsonlz4.

Thank you for the help. I moved the places.sqlite file (10.5MB) from the Old Firefox Data folder to the new profile (copy and paste). But...no bookmarks show up when I restart Firefox. The bookmarksbackup folder (in Old FF Data) is empty. I'm not sure how to restore a JSON backup from that folder.

Are there still any profile folders in the default location in AppData\Roaming apart from the profile you currently use?

You can use this button to go to the current Firefox profile folder:

• Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

You can go up one level to \Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ to check that.

• C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

You can use the SQLite Manager extension to check that places.sqlite file to see if there is any data in the file.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/sqlite-manager/

As long as you copy and pasted the file to the new profile you will still have the original copy on your desktop. If you moved the file copy it back to where it came from using Copy and paste.

I am trying to make sure you do not lose information unnecessarily in this case your History information, but it is sounding as if that profile had no bookmarks in it.

First of all follow the advice above to install and run places maintenance.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

Use its option to make a log file before attempting a repair and after the repair attempt. Paste the log files into your next reply.

With luck your bookmarks will now work and you can ignore the remainder of this post.

Cor-el already provided an indirect link to the article

• Can't add, change or save bookmarks - How to fix

Please work through that and report your findings:

1. Can you add or change bookmarks _i-cant-add-or-change-bookmarks
   • If you have problems here see and follow Changes to toolbars and window sizes are not saved
2. I can add or change bookmarks but they are lost when I restart Firefox see
   1. Follow the instructions to Rename places.sqlite and restart Firefox then test again to see if you can add bookmarks.
   2. You should now at least have a working bookmarks system.

The problem now is trying to find any copy of a file we can that has any bookmarks in it. The log files you generate may show the places.sqlite was empty.

• The Firefox reset/refresh is not supposed to lose bookmarks.
• And the copy profile on the Desktop should also contain your bookmarks as both a full database, and series of snapshot backups.

I do not know the first thing about Mac s time machine. So I am not sure if that could help you by being able to restore previous places.sqlites or previous .jsonlz4 backups.

• https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Machine
• https://support.apple.com/HT201250