bookmark folders disappear after updates

[rickety_goodman]

I have an extensive folder setup of bookmarks 4 & 5 levels deep.
After FF does its updates, I find some of the lower levels missing.
I know for a fact that I didn't delete them: some of them are ten years old and I NEVER delete ANYTHING
when I'm looking for bookmarks.
The most recent one was a folder with about 15 URLs about Russian ballet from Youtube.
It was under
Youtube
.Talent
..Ballet
...Russian
It was an accumulation of stuff that I have encountered on Youtube over the past 10 years.
Now it's gone.
Is there some way to extract just the Bookmark data from old profile backups to see if I can get
this folder back?

Thanks

[malliz]

Lost Bookmarks
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks
Restoring Bookmarks
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Backing_up_an ... _-_Firefox

[dfoulkes]

In addition to what malliz posted... it is always a good idea to perform a profile backup just prior to updating Firefox... JIC ... so, I don't have Firefox set to auto update ... I check for updates from time to time and if I see my Firefox needs updating I back out of the update window, perform my backup and then updated...

Even a small corruption in 'any' file could cause (in this case) something to go wrong with a file.

[the-edmeister]

I have an extensive folder setup of bookmarks 4 & 5 levels deep.
After FF does its updates, I find some of the lower levels missing. ...

Any chance you are using Sync?

And if so, is a Mobile device connected to that Sync account?

[rickety_goodman]

No, I don't use Sync.
And in my haste, I didn't explain myself clearly.

I have, literally, THOUSANDS of bookmarks. If I create a new one that doesn't seem to fit any of the categories that I have "folderized", I'll create a new folder for it.
If adding to that folder makes it become unwieldy, I'll find the time to group the similar bookmarks within that folder into their own subfolders within that folder.
By now, I have HUNDREDS of subfolders nested 4, 5, & 6 levels deep.

The reason this is possible is FF's "Search" function in "Show all bookmarks".

So I don't keep track of all this stuff; I bookmark everything that interests me and I ask FF to find where I'm hoarding other items like it when I go to save another one.
So the only way I know that a subfolder is suddenly missing is when I search for it to add another bookmark to it and am told that there are no other bookmarks.

I don't check every day to make sure that all my folders are there. That would be way too cumbersome.

The Youtube bookmarks are the most problematical because if you remember a unifying concept that all the bookmarks had in common and you enter that in the search bar
.on Youtube, they will reflect that idea into their list of most popular videos, pick out a couple that are slightly related, and then feed you page after page of links to videos that
.have absolutely nothing in common with the videos that you had bookmarked.
It can literally take weeks to track down the original videos that you saved for later scrutiny.

So I am specifically NOT trying to overwrite my whole bookmarks collection with an older version.
I want to be able to peruse a display of the bookmarks tree in an older profile, and copy only
.selected folders in that tree over into my current tree where they are missing.

I know how to overwrite the whole bookmark tree: I do it every time that I reinstall WinXP onto a new set of hard drives because it has become unwieldy.

Is it possible?
Can I even have a way to print the info from them in the old tree so that I can enter the URLs by hand to re-bookmark them?

Thanks for any ideas.

[dfoulkes]

If you have a system of backing up your profile (or at least the places.sqlite file) ... you can use another profile with that file placed in it... then you can open up both profiles at the same time...
Opening a new instance of your Mozilla application with another profile - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

...having both profiles open and in the Show All Bookmarks function... you create a new folder named your way, then in the other profile and after clicking on that same folder that your brought in above... you should now see all of the bookmarks in that folder... left-click on the top one, do a CTRL+A and all of them will be highlighted... right-click and copy... move back to that new folder in your main profile and placing the mouse-pointer on that folder... left-click and paste... you should now have all of those bookmarks in there.

As for the printing out of bookmarks (url's) .....
Solved: Re: is there any way to print out my listing of bo... - Mozilla Support Community

You may want read this also... I've read 'someplace' where nesting too many layers of folders in that file can cause it to go corrupt... just a FYI.
Locked or damaged places.sqlite - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

[rickety_goodman]

Thank you.
Interesting idea.
I'll read it over and try it.

FWIW, I followed that link you gave for printing the URLs, but ran into a problem:
I was following the instructions given by "SubZerQQ", but they didn't work.
I created a new bookmark, renamed it "Show Addresses", copied that long javascript entry in for the location, and the only choice at the bottom was "Cancel".
"Add" was greyed out.
I even tried adding tags and description and keywords. The "Add" button never lit up for me.

I looked for a "NoScript" portal on that page thinking that it might be preventing that javascript line from functioning, but couldn't find anything.
Interestingly, with that javascript line in the location box, the "Location" header at the top of the window was listing "about:config" as the location.

Any suggestions?
That also sounded like something that I'd like to try.
Thanks

[LIMPET235]

Hi, This old/er thread explains how to print bookmarks a bit more & it works fine.
> http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 35#2384935
Once the bookmarks are backed up as html, in Firefox use, File > Open to open that file into a blank Firefox tab.
Once loaded, use the bookmarklet, "Print html bookmarks." (That's what I named mine.)

Then just select, > Print Preview or Print & you're good to go.
It's been suggested to Preview them first & to reduce the size to around 60 or 70%.
That size is up to you.

Have fun.

Oh yes. It's an idea to print the instructions in dickvl's link out as well
viz; > http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 1#p2385421.
That's a simple copy 'n' paste though.