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Unrecoverable bookmarks?

  • 5 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Paskiausią atsakymą parašė user633449

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My laptop crashed few weeks ago - would not restart. Had to reinstall/reload Vista and drivers and download all software from scratch.

Stupidly? I did not realise that with firefox you have to manually export your bookmarks to save them - in my docs or wherever. I thought they were automatically saving in to my favourites folder like internet explorer does. However Dell support tell me that firefox does not do this and so now my bookmarks are lost for good/unrecoverable. (They did look for them on my system once it was up and running again).

I just want to check that this is definitely the case. 4 years' worth of stuff in bookmarks,tags folders gone? If so then lesson learnt the hard way.. And I'll now export/backup my bookmarks weekly. Thanks

My laptop crashed few weeks ago - would not restart. Had to reinstall/reload Vista and drivers and download all software from scratch. Stupidly? I did not realise that with firefox you have to manually export your bookmarks to save them - in my docs or wherever. I thought they were automatically saving in to my favourites folder like internet explorer does. However Dell support tell me that firefox does not do this and so now my bookmarks are lost for good/unrecoverable. (They did look for them on my system once it was up and running again). I just want to check that this is definitely the case. 4 years' worth of stuff in bookmarks,tags folders gone? If so then lesson learnt the hard way.. And I'll now export/backup my bookmarks weekly. Thanks

Chosen solution

The Dell staff probably wouldn't know where Firefox keeps it's data.

Open the APPDATA folder, then double click on "Roaming". Then, "Mozilla", then "Firefox", the "Profiles". Inside here are your Firefox profiles. If you only have one, it's easy, copy the info from it to your new one using the directions linked above. If you have more than one, look at the dates to find the correct one.

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All Replies (5)

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Did you save the APPDATA folder from your user profile? (It's a hidden folder) This is where Firefox stores it's bookmarks (and other data) inside a profile folder in the APPDATA folder.

Recovering important data from an old profile

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Hi thanks for your reply. The appdata folder is there in my old windows profile but I don't know where to go to in it to import bookmarks from - assuming they're there. (I have a dell laptop and so I got in touch with their software help-desk so it was they who reinstalled etc and searched for files. I assumed that if the files were there they would have found them as they did look. ?) cheers

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Chosen Solution

The Dell staff probably wouldn't know where Firefox keeps it's data.

Open the APPDATA folder, then double click on "Roaming". Then, "Mozilla", then "Firefox", the "Profiles". Inside here are your Firefox profiles. If you only have one, it's easy, copy the info from it to your new one using the directions linked above. If you have more than one, look at the dates to find the correct one.

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THANK YOU!!!!! :) After trying a few things from the different options - realised i didn't want to create new profile - in the end viewed my profile details through the troubleshooting drop down and was able to just copy the one file dated the day my laptop 'died' into that folder and they are 'back'! I cannot tell you how much this means - I really had given up after trawling around Mozilla and long conversations with Dell - I will pass on the info to them! Perhaps I'll get a part refund?!! One last little question - does this mean then that I don't need to be manually backing them up as mozilla is automatically doing this to a recoverable location if - please no - this ever happened to me again? Cheers so much

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I would make sure you back up at the very least the APPDATA folder, in case of hard drive failure.