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places.sqlite won't transfer my bookmarks between Firefox installations....

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  • Last reply by vmzhuk

vmzhuk
vmzhuk
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I learned recently about the Firefox Sync feature, but if the only thing I want to do is transfer bookmarks from an FF21.0 installation on an old computer to an FF21.0 installation on a new computer, can't I just copy and paste the "places.sqlite" file ? On my new laptop there are no saved bookmarks in Firefox to worry about. I tried the copy and paste, and verified on new laptop that the original places.sqlite file was replaced, as planned, by places.sqlite from the old computer, but even after restarting FF, no transferred bookmarks showed up.

The other approach I took was to do an Import of bookmarks from html, but quickly learned of the problems involved with importing an html file with a .json extension.

Any suggestions?

Jeff

I learned recently about the Firefox Sync feature, but if the only thing I want to do is transfer bookmarks from an FF21.0 installation on an old computer to an FF21.0 installation on a new computer, can't I just copy and paste the "places.sqlite" file ? On my new laptop there are no saved bookmarks in Firefox to worry about. I tried the copy and paste, and verified on new laptop that the original places.sqlite file was replaced, as planned, by places.sqlite from the old computer, but even after restarting FF, no transferred bookmarks showed up. The other approach I took was to do an Import of bookmarks from html, but quickly learned of the problems involved with importing an html file with a .json extension. Any suggestions? Jeff

Chosen solution

HTML and JSON are two different formats. There are separate menu items for importing bookmarks from each format — make sure you pick the right one.

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All Replies (3)

Gingerbread Man
Gingerbread Man
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Chosen Solution

HTML and JSON are two different formats. There are separate menu items for importing bookmarks from each format — make sure you pick the right one.

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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It is usually not a good idea to copy a places.sqlite from a newer Firefox version to an older Firefox version because the newer version may be using a newer version of SQLite and thus the places.sqlite database file might not be compatible.

Restoring a JSON backup (bookmarks-####-##-##.json) or importing an HTML backup should work.
Make sure the the file has the correct file extension (.json or .html) or it won't work and Firefox might complain.

vmzhuk
vmzhuk Question owner
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Thank you both for the answers. Turns out I had over-looked the "Choose File" option under Import and Backup//Restore.