My adjacent answer may help: /questions/891696#answer-268323

Thanks but that answer does not address my problem. On both machines I have a lot of unsorted bookmarks. On each machine I only see a couple of them. I'm sure I could "organize" these few unsorted bookmarks that do show up, or delete them. My problem is that most of the bookmarks that show up unsorted if I click to go to a bookmark do not show up at all when I'm trying to organize bookmarks.

If you open a bookmarked page as a tab the location bar will show the coloured star indicating it is bookmarked. Click on that star and the edit bookmark dialogue opens. The dialogue should indicate where the bookmark is stored.

For unsorted bookmarks they would of course by definition normally be in the folder Unsorted Bookmarks see

• https://support.mozilla.com/media/uploads/gallery/images/2011-03-03-06-41-12-beb4de.png
  • from Bookmarks in Firefox
• Use bookmark folders to organize your bookmarks

Are you able to find and open the bookmarks library containing these bookmarks. Firefox will do a temporary sort of the display for you by any of the chosen column headers.

If I click my "Bookmarks" in Firefox I can scroll down past all my folders, and through all my unsorted bookmarks below that. Everything works fine. If I click "Show All Bookmarks" I see all my folders down the left side of the window. If I click on a folder it's contents show properly on the right side of the window. Down at the very bottom is the little star for Unsorted Bookmarks. If I click on that I will see between zero and three of my unsorted bookmarks on the right side. All of the rest seem to be lost. The ones that I do see seem to be the last pages I've bookmarked. Thanks again.

Maybe it would help if you attach a screen shot of the conten in both sidebar view and library view, I would have thought the content would be identical whether viewed from the sidebar or the Library.

Have you perhaps created multiple folders with the name "Unsorted Bookmarks" ?

No, the content is completely different, as described. I can see all my unsorted bookmarks when I just click on the Bookmarks menu to go visit a bookmarked site. No problem, it works just like it always has.

I have not created any folders with the name Unsorted Bookmarks - there's only the one created by Firefox. But when I go to Show All Bookmarks it appears that I only have only three or fewer unsorted bookmarks. I can click or doubleclick the icon, in the left window or the right one, and the result is always the same, on both XP machines.

It turns out though that other people are having this same problem, and that the screwy solution is to forget the buggy Unsorted Bookmarks and just open Bookmarks Menu. There are all the unsorted bookmarks, and they can be organized.

Thanks again for your efforts.

You may be happy just to use the library instead of the sidebar, if you would like to follow up the problem further:

Are you able to attach comparative screenshots please. I may be being naive but I think the two sets the sidebar and bookmarks library should be using the same data from the same database a file called places.sqlite they should therefore display the same folder content, just in a different setting.
(I do know the sidebar is broken in regard to tooltips in some circumstances {bug644952} ).

If I can be certain what you are seeing I will try to get someone who understands this to look more closely. If I am able to recreate the problem myself I will happily file a bug so that the situation gets drawn to the attention of developers, and may get fixed.

You mention others have the same problem, but this thread is not getting votes form others so it tends to indicate it could be a rare problem and possibly down to something that is changed on your own machine. I have firefox on XPs and have not yet noticed such a problem.

There is the possibility that some other software extension is causing this problem
please therefore try in Firefox's safe mode

• do not make changes in the first Window, just click on continue
• use only the default theme
• temporarily also disable all plugins, whilst you are still in safe mode if the above steps did not help.

Does that solve the problem ?

It would also be worth trying in a new profile, again I would expect that to solve the problem. A corrupt database could also cause problems, but as I said above I would then anticipate problems in both views.

Another thought, are you using the meubar toolbar or the bookmarks toolbar ?

• are you using the left hand sidebar from the traditional menubar, (the menubar seen by pressing the keyboard Alt key. ) and using
  View-> Sidebar -> bookmarks
• or are you using the one on the right that resides (by default) on the bookmarks toolbar and only displays when the Firefox Button is being shown.
  (also accessible by clicking Bookmarks if the the menubar is displaying)
• one or the other types should toggle on and off as you use keyboard Ctrl + B
  ( Although you will not do it as the information is redundant and it is a waste of screen space it is possible to display both types simultaneously.)

How do I find the library? I don't see any library item on any of my Firefox menus.

I'm just clicking the Bookmarks item on the top Firefox menu File - Edit - View, etc. Nothing tricky.

There's really nothing to see on a screenshot. When I click my bookmarks menu I can scroll down past my folders and then on to page after page of unsorted bookmarks - which I can visit by clicking. But when I go to Show All Bookmarks and open the Unsorted Bookmarks folder I see between 0 and 3 unsorted bookmarks appear in the big right window. All the rest are missing.

As I mentioned, I found the answer posted to another person's question about this that I had not been able to find before, due obviously to using the wrong words in my searching. There were 16 others claiming the same problem, and as I mentioned the solution there did work. I can see all my unsorted bookmarks if I click Bookmarks : Show All Bookmarks : Bookmarks Menu, then all my unsorted bookmarks show up in the big righthand window, as they should when I open the Unsorted Bookmarks folder.

Thanks again.

Did you try to delete the files places.sqlite* files?

A possible cause is a problem with the file places.sqlite that stores the bookmarks and the history.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_history_and_toolbar_buttons_not_working_-_Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_places-database-file

• Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Open Containing Folder

Your unsorted bookmarks will, by default, remain in the order you added them in the unsorted folder, you can however if you wish re-arrange them.

• library
  I am referring to the bookmarks window that you will see by using
  • Bookmarks -> Show all Bookmarks (previously was Bookmarks -> Organise bookmarks; often now showing as Firefox Button ->Bookmarks -> show all bookmarks) (Keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + B)
  • (In XP it will probably open in a Window with a blue bar at the top saying Library)
• sidebar
  I guess this is being deprecated, but the menubar still has the option
  • View -> Sidebar -> Bookmarks
    (OR Keyboard shortcut Ctrl + B <-- works even if Firefox Button displaying, instead of menubar)
• manually rearrange
  permanently by dragging and dropping bookmarks singly or in groups. You may also create sub folders, even nested subfolders of unsorted bookmarks (or any other of the bookmarks sets)
  • for instance you could take out groups of your unsorted bookmarks, and put them in folders and subfolders within the Bookmarks toolbar folder, thus creating multiple nested dropdowns from that toolbar. The easiest method of creating structured bookmark folders is to put bookmarks in the intended folder initially, rather than adding nearly all of them as unsorted bookmarks.
• temporarily sort, even the unsorted ones
  Whilst in the library view they will sort, click on the header columns they sort in up or down order on the column you click. (Or at least they should do, and they do on my Firefox on XP s - if yours are not doing something is going wrong.)

If you do consider deleting the file places.sqlite, in the hope that you have better copies to restore from at least back up the current bookmarks, and any sets you restore, otherwise you risk loosing them because they will be overwritten. 300 bookmarks in the wrong order is better than no bookmarks.

Note if you copy bookmarks from one folder to another whilst they are sorted, they may retain  that order in the new folder