How to Restore Lost Bookmarks in Firefox

Posted by Saad Hamid on May 31, 2008

Yesterday I was browsing via Firefox when suddenly the power went out and to my horror I found that I lost all my Firefox bookmarks and I did not have any backup.

This is actually a Firefox bug which causes a user to lose all bookmarks if Firefox is not closed properly but thanks to a solution provided by anewmorning, you can restore all bookmarks using the smart backup feature of Firefox which automatically makes a backup of your bookmarks daily.

Here is how it goes:

  1. Go to run and type the following and press enter:
    %APPDATA%MozillaFirefoxProfiles
  2. In the folder that opens, simply open the "bookmarkbackups" folder. If you use multiple profiles then open the profile folder first and then open the "bookmarkbackups".
  3. In this folder you will see backup of all your bookmarks that were made by Firefox automatically according to date.
  4. Now to restore the bookmarks open Firefox and go to Bookmarks → Organize Bookmarks. In the Bookmarks Manager, click on File → Import and select Import from File and click Next. Choose the backup HTML file and enjoy!

Alternatively, I would recommend Firefox users to make self-made backups of settings, bookmarks on a regular basis. Here is a good tool to make Backup of Firefox Settings and Bookmarks.

Posted in: Software/OS

  • "How to Restore Lost Bookmarks in Firefox" ==> install Google Sync add-on :)
  • Yay!...Kudos to you for sharing this tip.

    What a coincidence. I just cant believe this.

    I lost all my bookmarks today. And today itself, you've written a post about recovering those.

    Thank You. Thanks a lot.
  • Appreciate it, Flush =)
  • Heya, this has happened to me several times before. Though I've accessed my bookmarks via the HTML files, I didn't know that you could actually "restore" those bookmarks and import them directly into Firefox.

    Thanks for sharing, Dj!
  • @chlitoo

    Google Sync just synchronizes your current Firefox settings and in no way can be used to restore old bookmarks.

    @All

    Welcome :)
  • Raj
    Nice Post :) Thanks
  • Great Post!
  • This prob has occured with me also a 2-3 times
    gr8 tip , thanks
  • From your tip i have tried and created a simple video tutorial .

    Watch Video Tutorial
  • Meddan
    Thanks for a great tip.. has helped save me from recreating my bookmarks from scratch.
    One related problem I have is when a bookmark in some mysterious way moves from one folder to another. Now i can do a search and find the bookmark but the search result doesn't show in which folder it is located. Is there anyway i can find out the folder currently holding the bookmark so i can move it back to it's original place? ... is there any extension that would add one more property in the bookmark properties to show folder location of the bookmark?
    TIA
  • Buzzer
    This just happened to me.
    Thankfully They were still in IE7, I guess we all know who we can really trust.
    Thanks Firefox, but no thanks.
  • garyvdh
    One word: "Foxmarks" :D
  • Thanx!!! You saved me...They were in bookmark back-ups...PHEW!
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