Last night my bookmarks ALL vanished, & using Restore Bookmarks as Firefox advice only results in an 'unable to process the backup. file' message. HELP!
ALSO, when clicking on the History tab, Show All History', in the library box resulting, there is only reference to Bookmarks, nothing else is accessible, including the normal History record. So I can't access both Bookmarks, except for one experimental one I made to see if that would work - that is kept, but nothing else is there in either All History - just the very recent tabs - or Bookmarks.
So I need full Bookmark AND History restoration.
All Replies (5)
Thanks! I have already tried the Restore Bmks in Firefox's menu, but as above, no joy. I had made one more this morning, which 'took'. However after re-starting the computer it had gone. So it looks as though they're not being saved. There was a lot of king among the bmks & I could live without those lost, but having no History will be inconvenient! Perhaps the next update might help - or do you think un/reinstalling FF could help? I am the only user of this computer. At the moment I don't think it's really worth a very in-depth operation & I'm not an expert.
- I meant 'junk' among the bookmarks!
To Firefox bookmarks are more important than History.
Bookmarks have additional automated backups made and if the database runs out of space bookmarks are retained but History is deleted. Bookmarks may also be manually backed up to keep them safe. In future it may be worth making more bookmarks.
- Make a copy of places.sqlite and put it somewhere safe outside Firefox program or profile paths (Your desktop will do). That is the only file with your History in it.
- The file is in your profile. To find it use Firefox button -> Help -> Troubleshooting [open folder] {or whatever)
- see Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data
- Manually backup your bookmarks, you need to do this before and between changes. Remember any restores overwrite and destroy existing bookmarks
- see Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer_manual-backup
- Download install and run https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/
The addon may fix your History problem. It may also be used to produce a short diagnostic report on the status of the database. It may not work as a solution, but at least we have now done all we can to preserve any History & Bookmark data that you have.
See also
Note it is linked from the bookmarks article.
Please post back with how you get on.
Delete the places.sqlite file(s) in the Firefox profile folder to force Firefox to rebuild the places.sqlite database file from a JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder.
Modified by cor-el