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How do I get bookmarks from Firefox 3.6 version of places.sqlite into Firefox 4?

  • 3 replies
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  • Last reply by windymiller

windymiller
windymiller
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I have had to rebuild my PC after it died. I now have Firefox 4 installed. I have a backup of my old build, but that had Firefox 3.6 installed. How do I restore my bookmarks?

I have tried copying the places.sqlite file from my backup to the current profiles folder (after moving the current places.sqlite file elsewhere first, and deleting all of the .json files in \bookmarkbackups, as advised on another forum). But my old bookmarks still don't appear when I open Firefox.

Am I missing a step? Hope someone can advise. Many thanks.

I have had to rebuild my PC after it died. I now have Firefox 4 installed. I have a backup of my old build, but that had Firefox 3.6 installed. How do I restore my bookmarks? I have tried copying the places.sqlite file from my backup to the current profiles folder (after moving the current places.sqlite file elsewhere first, and deleting all of the .json files in \bookmarkbackups, as advised on another forum). But my old bookmarks still don't appear when I open Firefox. Am I missing a step? Hope someone can advise. Many thanks.

All Replies (3)

windymiller
windymiller Question owner
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Ah, I think perhaps my backed up places.sqlite file had somehow lost all of my stored bookmarks before the PC died. If I compare it with a copy on another PC, it is far smaller (10Mb vs 50Mb). Not sure how this happened. But it would certainly explain why the method above hasn't managed to restore my old bookmarks!

cor-el
cor-el
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Didn't you backup the JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder as well?

In Firefox 4 the file places.sqlite is extended in 10 MB chunks to prevent fragmentation of the file causing performance issues, so if it is now 10 MB then it is possible that a new file was created.

windymiller
windymiller Question owner
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Hi cor-el,

Thanks for the suggestion. I had looked at the backed up JSON files, but hadn't been sure whether it would be advisable to restore to FF4 from a FF3.6 backup. But, in any case, it looked as though they had been wiped too. There were only 2 JSON files, for the two days prior to my backup date. And both were only 3,860 bytes in size (compared with 290kb on another PC). So I concluded that they were probably just 'empty' backups (ie - backups of Firefox after it had already lost all of my settings).

Ah well. C'est la vie!