Thoughts on Missing Bookmarks

Guest · Post by **Guest** » February 18th, 2005, 7:00 am

Any latest update on the lost bookmarks ? I have just lost them for the second time in 2 months.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » February 18th, 2005, 7:05 am

Seems to be the consensus of some that they are NOT lost, merely hiding someplace.
If you using XP or Win2K make sure you have set the option to 'show hidden folders' to ON,
and search for bookmarks.html (main file) and or bookmarks.bak (backup)

Heffer · Post by **Heffer** » February 18th, 2005, 4:25 pm

Anonymous wrote:Any latest update on the lost bookmarks ? I have just lost them for the second time in 2 months.

Have you read anything in this thread?

Otto Madick · Post by **Otto Madick** » February 18th, 2005, 6:37 pm

YrbkMgr: Seems to believe that all bookmark challenges happen to be operator error.

I'm here to tell you that when I recieved a new profile after a firefox crash, everthing was gone bookmarks, extensions, themes, when this happened I was forced to shut down when I restarted the computer everthing was gone.

I looked everywere for them except Yrbkmgr's files.

I checked the profile manager and only one profile was listed and the bookmark folder did not have my bookmarks in them.

I agree that most of the time the bookmark files can be found however, I think that having a computer crash will sometimes cause a complete new profile and something happens to the default one. Just my humble opinion.

Otto Madick

pmanger · Post by **pmanger** » March 1st, 2005, 7:17 pm

Sorry, YrbkMgr, but the bookmarks are disappearing because of a bug in the last two updates of Mozilla Firefox, not because of anything a user does or does not do. They also aren't disappearing because Windows is shutting down "too" fast, or because there are open applications when Windows shuts down (Windows is supposed to take care of closing open applications before shutting down, anyway), or because there are multiple instances of Firefox running.

And the bookmarks are really, truly lost forever. I did a search of every folder on every drive on my system (including system and hidden files) after I lost my bookmarks this afternoon, and there was not a trace of the lost bookmark file to be found, even in the recycle bins. And bookmarks.bak, which is supposed to back up bookmarks.html, was also empty.

In addition to the bookmarks, I also lost some system settings. Fortunately, I didn't lose my stored emails or my address book, which are also stored with the user profile. And I was able to recover some of my bookmarks by importing them from Netscape 7.2, which I used before switching to Firefox. Not up-to-date, but better than nothing.

The folks at the Mozilla project are aware of the bug, and will assure you there is absolutely no way to recover the lost bookmarks. They recommend backing up your user profile at least once a week.

greenknight · Post by **greenknight** » March 2nd, 2005, 1:02 am

Get the Bookmark Backup extension, which automatically makes a copy of your bookmarks (and other profile info,optionally) each time you close the browser (up to seven before it overwrites the oldest). http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic=13

Guest · Post by **Guest** » March 2nd, 2005, 1:43 am

All my bookmarks are lost. i tried backing up some from internet explorer, after i rebooted bookmarks was all empty again , what can i do? thanks

greenknight · Post by **greenknight** » March 2nd, 2005, 4:30 am

You may find something in this thread: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 72#1043872

Guest · Post by **Guest** » March 2nd, 2005, 5:27 am

This morning I lost my bookmarks, first time this has happened. There is only one profile showing and it is the default profile., system files are not set to be hidden. I am not a computer whiz at all so Im lost as to how to get them back

Guessed · Post by **Guessed** » March 2nd, 2005, 12:34 pm

Since this appears to be more of a discussion than a support thread, might I share some thoughts?
I'm new here, so I apologize if this is inappropriate for this section, and you can, of course, feel free to move or delete it, as you see fit.

I'm here because I'm one of those who seems to have lost their bookmarks by upgrading from .8 to 1.0, but I haven't given up hope of finding them yet, as I see some promising posts in another thread which I'll try as soon as possible.

I do back things up, including my bookmarks and favorites, but not obsessively, and certainly not daily, so I'd prefer not to resort to using old data because there will be some loss.
Considering how unstable and error-prone and just generally crappy all Microsoft products seem to be, the fact that I'd never had a single problem with my favorites during an upgrade led me to feel that Firefox, being a supposedly far superior product, would upgrade at least as intelligently and smoothly, so I really didn't think it necessary to do a last-minute backup.

And now, after coming to the forums, I see that this and similar issues are fairly commonplace, yet even as a somewhat experienced computer and internet user, information about these problems and their solutions wasn't as easy to find as it should be.

For example, I don't recall seeing anything at all on the 1.0 download page regarding upgrading from earlier Firefox versions, problems one might have, and precautions one should take, which helped in leading me to believe I could simply install the upgrade and be on my way, though I did at least think it best to install after rebooting.

But anyway, before I ramble on too much, what I'm getting at is that if such issues aren't going to be fixed sometime tonight, updating any relevant webpages, especially the download page, to include proper precautionary information, and/or making it painfully obvious so that even the noobiest of the noobs won't have a problem finding it and following it, might prevent a lot of headache and panic.

merlin magicien · Post by **merlin magicien** » March 2nd, 2005, 1:04 pm

I experience the same problem with bookmarks. But i didn't occur while upgrading but month later, so before thinking your own problems are general problems ask others!
Nevertheless i recognize that i was very very angry when i discover the totally blank bookmark tool.

GUEST :) · Post by **GUEST :)** » March 2nd, 2005, 2:09 pm

Guessed wrote:<snip> I'm here because I'm one of those who seems to have lost their bookmarks by upgrading from .8 to 1.0, but I haven't given up hope of finding them yet, as I see some promising posts in another thread which I'll try as soon as possible.

... I don't recall seeing anything at all on the 1.0 download page regarding upgrading from earlier Firefox versions, problems one might have, and precautions one should take, which helped in leading me to believe I could simply install the upgrade and be on my way, though I did at least think it best to install after rebooting.

Between .08 and now there have been several changes to the profiles, including the location, you probably will be able to find your bookmarks in a file called bookmarks.html located in a folder in your Application Data called Phoenix. Windows hides app data by default, so you will need to change to show hidden files and folders.

The instructions for updating/installing are in a link on the FF page called Release Notes- I agree, there should be more attention called to this information, but nobody asked me

.

Release Notes

pmanger · Post by **pmanger** » March 3rd, 2005, 3:36 pm

If your bookmarks simply vanished inexplicably, there is no way to recover them. However, most people using Firefox have recently switched from Netscape or Internet Explorer. If you still have your old browser installed on your system, you can probably get some usable bookmarks. The easiest way is to select Bookmarks/Manage Bookmarks from the Firefox menu, and then File/Import. Check the appropriate radio button, and the bookmarks from your old browser will be imported.

For more recent bookmarks, you might be able to get some from your History list.

Then, in the future, back up your bookmarks. They are in a file under Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default, where xxxxxxxx is a string of random characters. The location of Application Data depends on your operating system. In Windows 2000, NT and XP, it would be under C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]; in other versions of Windows, it will be under C:\Windows.

Phil

annoyed user · Post by **annoyed user** » March 19th, 2005, 8:20 am

It would seem to me that it is possible for your bookmarks to be lost, i have searched my pc extensivly and i can find no trace of the so called bookmarks that i should be able to find.

Heffer said "problems associatted with the novice computer user.They can't find files or folders with Windows Explorer much less find Explorer's location"

I consider myself to be a "novice user" but i can use Explorer no problem and navigate my way round most of my pc with no problems whatsoever, the main problem is that i only have one instance of the default user profile and it contains none of my old bookmarks at all so it would appear that is is possible for them to be lost completely.

any help would be much appreciated

greenknight · Post by **greenknight** » March 20th, 2005, 1:58 am

If you have Win 2000 or XP, your profile folder is in a hidden file. See: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder

Thoughts on Missing Bookmarks

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Missing bookmarks