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accidently sync'd in the wrong direction (old over new). Recovery possible?

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  • Last reply by FredMcD

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I sync'd the old bookmarks of my laptop accidently over the new bookmarks on my PC. So I have lost many very valuable bookmarks on my PC. Is there any possibility to recover the new bookmarks of my PC or they are all lost by now?

Btw, when I sync'd I expected to get the new bookmarks of my PC on the laptop, but it worked exactly in the other direction. Because I have more PC's I have the question - before I sync other PC's - is there any indication which PC will be the source (sender)? Any help will be very much appreciated. Regards, Gerd

I sync'd the old bookmarks of my laptop accidently over the new bookmarks on my PC. So I have lost many very valuable bookmarks on my PC. Is there any possibility to recover the new bookmarks of my PC or they are all lost by now? Btw, when I sync'd I expected to get the new bookmarks of my PC on the laptop, but it worked exactly in the other direction. Because I have more PC's I have the question - before I sync other PC's - is there any indication which PC will be the source (sender)? Any help will be very much appreciated. Regards, Gerd

Chosen solution

Firefox automatically makes backups of the bookmarks. These are stored in the bookmarkbackups folder.

Open the Bookmarks Manager; Press the Alt or F10 key to bring up the toolbar, and select Bookmarks. Hot key is <Control> (Mac=<Command>) <Shift> B.

Once the window is open, at the top of the page, press the button labeled Import and Backup. Select Restore. From the list, pick the file you want and click it.

The backups are stored in a jsonlz4 file named something like this; bookmarks-2016-06-29_1424_enD1GTH ya0JmicnYWg4V4g==.jsonlz4

In this example; 2016-06-29 = date created, 1424 = number of entries.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recover-lost-or-missing-bookmarks

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With sync, there is no master. Whatever is on computer A is sent to computer B and what is on B is sent to A.

Unless something was removed, nothing should have been deleted.

If you have sync, and there is a problem anywhere, Shut Down Sync Immediately On All Devices to prevent the problem from spreading. Once the problem is fixed, perform the same repair on all computers/profiles before using sync again.

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Chosen Solution

Firefox automatically makes backups of the bookmarks. These are stored in the bookmarkbackups folder.

Open the Bookmarks Manager; Press the Alt or F10 key to bring up the toolbar, and select Bookmarks. Hot key is <Control> (Mac=<Command>) <Shift> B.

Once the window is open, at the top of the page, press the button labeled Import and Backup. Select Restore. From the list, pick the file you want and click it.

The backups are stored in a jsonlz4 file named something like this; bookmarks-2016-06-29_1424_enD1GTH ya0JmicnYWg4V4g==.jsonlz4

In this example; 2016-06-29 = date created, 1424 = number of entries.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recover-lost-or-missing-bookmarks

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Once you have recovered your bookmarks, Open the Bookmarks Manager; Press the Alt or F10 key to bring up the toolbar, and select Bookmarks. Hot key is <Control> (Mac=<Command>) <Shift> B.

Once the window is open, at the top of the page, press the button labeled Import and Backup. Select Export Bookmarks To HTML, and follow the prompts and save it to a HTML file. Copy the file to another computer/profile. Repeat the instructions above, BUT select Import Bookmarks From HTML.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recover-lost-or-missing-bookmarks

Mozilla search: Import {web link}