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My bookmarks list contains at least five bookmarks toolbars, five recent tags, and 5 "Other bookmarks" folders

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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My bookmarks list contains at least five bookmarks toolbars, five recent tags, multiple and five Other Bookmarks folders. The folders in the various Other Bookmarks folders are not all identical, and the contents of folders with the same name may differ somewhat. In different Other Bookmarks folders, there may be additional bookmarks that were never assigned to a folder. These apparently are not always carried forward to the newest version.

I assume that this mess has something to do with automatically-saved bookmark lists. I would like to clean it up expediently without losing data.

Clean-up questions: What is the most expedient way of making sure I have a single list containing all my folders, including those from previous lists? When folders are carried forward, I assume they they contain the same bookmarks. Is this a correct assumption? Or are some of these also deleted? If I delete a folder with a particular name from an earlier list, will that folder be deleted from all the other lists?

Right-clicking on a folder does not provide a Rename option. Is there some other way to do this? (I searched for How do I rename a bookmark folder? 18 pages of 'hits'. After 11 screens of useless information about bookmark problems, I gave up).

Prevention questions: I would like to avoid having the same thing happen in the future. What is it that determines whether a folder or a file is left behind?

My bookmarks list contains at least five bookmarks toolbars, five recent tags, multiple and five Other Bookmarks folders. The folders in the various Other Bookmarks folders are not all identical, and the contents of folders with the same name may differ somewhat. In different Other Bookmarks folders, there may be additional bookmarks that were never assigned to a folder. These apparently are not always carried forward to the newest version. I assume that this mess has something to do with automatically-saved bookmark lists. I would like to clean it up expediently without losing data. Clean-up questions: What is the most expedient way of making sure I have a single list containing all my folders, including those from previous lists? When folders are carried forward, I assume they they contain the same bookmarks. Is this a correct assumption? Or are some of these also deleted? If I delete a folder with a particular name from an earlier list, will that folder be deleted from all the other lists? Right-clicking on a folder does not provide a Rename option. Is there some other way to do this? (I searched for How do I rename a bookmark folder? 18 pages of 'hits'. After 11 screens of useless information about bookmark problems, I gave up). Prevention questions: I would like to avoid having the same thing happen in the future. What is it that determines whether a folder or a file is left behind?

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Did you ever imported an HTML bookmarks backup as that is a possible cause for multiple folder root folder like the Bookmarks Toolbar folder ?

The real Bookmarks Toolbar folder should have a special icon if you check this in the sidebar and in the left pane in the Library and should appear directly under the All Bookmarks folder as one of the three root folders (Bookmarks Toolbar, Bookmarks Menu, Other Bookmarks). If you import an HTML backup then it can happen that you get a Bookmarks Toolbar folder or Other Bookmarks folder under the Bookmarks Menu folder. You can do a Cut/Paste to move the bookmarks to a folder of your choice depending on where you want to see them. You can possibly sort by Location (URL) to make it easier to find duplicates.

I think that the other copies get the general folder icon and you should be able to remove the those folders via the right-click context menu.


If you use Sync then best is to disconnect Sync temporarily during troubleshooting.

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder.

  • use the "Places Database" -> "Verify Integrity" button on the "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page

If errors are reported with "Verify Integrity", close and restart Firefox or reboot and retry.

See also:

You can use the button on the "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page (Root directory).