Losing bookmarks

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
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katesdad
Guest

Post by katesdad »

VectorThunder wrote:Dan E: Why don't you read this thread? Your answer to how to get back to the original profile is already here at post number 6!!!

"Close Firefox.
Open Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del) and look in the 'processes' list and if you find 'firefox.exe' then highlight it and click on 'end task'.

Now go:

Start > run, and type in: firefox.exe -p

That is firefox.exe<space><hyphen>p

That should launch Profile Manager and you should see TWO profiles listed. The original 'default' one has all your old settings. Delete the new one you created and launch with the old one.

If the above path doesn't launch Profile Manager, you may need to enter it as follows instead:

Start > run > firefox.exe -ProfileManager

If ever you get asked, out of the blue, to create a new Profile, don't. Just do the 'Task Manager' thing above and you can launch normally."
tried all above still screwed out of my bookmarks.
Daniel|FUC
Guest

Post by Daniel|FUC »

This thread was really helpfull. You should have it as a sticky :)


THX
Daniel
Guest Number 6
Guest

Post by Guest Number 6 »

Obscure "prisoner" references aside, I've had the same problems as most people here.
I shut down last night, turn back on this morning and lo and behold my favourites and tabs have gone. The HTML files are empty, there are no .chk files, no bookmarks.html.moztmp files and none of the methods in this thread have worked.
I'm currently downloading a file recovery program in the effort that this'll help with the problem, but its looking like I may have to reimport my now rather dated favourites from IE. Disapointing, to say the least.

Richard, its all very well reposting and reposting the advice you gave earlier but for those that have already lost their bookmarks, contstantly saying "Bookmark Backup!" is NO HELP AT ALL.
Too late - you've already missed the bus.

This is a problem that really shouldnt happen. Sigh.
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

Yet another user here who just lost his bookmarks. No crash, no warning, just disappeared. No second profile, no hidden backup file. Pah. Agree with Guest Number 6, the advice repeated here about backups is useless if you've already lost your bookmarks. This happened to me before when I was using Netscape and was one of the reasons I much preferred IE's way of storing them - as separate files. When will it happen again, I wonder?
User avatar
YrbkMgr
Posts: 953
Joined: August 21st, 2004, 10:06 am
Location: Chicago

Post by YrbkMgr »

Sigh.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 37#1245637

It isn't about bookmark backup - even though going forward, that's a good idea. It's about finding your old ones. See the thread above, and use ProfileManager.
The nice thing about standards in computing is that there are so many from which to choose.
Guessed
Guest

Post by Guessed »

mcm_ham wrote:The profile folder changed locations between versions, the new installation is meant to automatically transfer your settings across but I guess it failed for some reason. If all you want is the bookmarks copy the bookmarks.html located in a subfolder of:

C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Phoenix\Profiles

to the appropiate subfolder of:

C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox



Thank you very much. :)
That wouldn't have occurred to me.
I did the import method you mentioned in your next post and it worked fine.
Perhaps a nice, large, bold, text link to your post (or equivalent) placed on the 1.0 download page, just below the download link, would be an idea? :-"
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

I just recovered a lost bookmark file for someone from the c:\found.000 directory. Anyone with lost bookmarks should definitely try that, in addition to the profile manager approach mentioned in previous posts.
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

My thoughts on the 'controversy' over who's to blame for lost bookmarks:

1) Users should certainly regularly back up any important data, which includes (for many people) their bookmarks.

2) However, it sounds like there may be some FireFox bug(s) which result in lost bookmarks. Since the bookmarks are really the primary user created data for FireFox, this should be taken very seriously. It is similar to losing a document that is being edited in a word processing program. It's a big deal. I would assume that there are FireFox developers that are working hard on this issue. Presumably none of them are posting (or even reading) this thread. It would be comforting if one of the developers would post SOMETHING indicating that this is considered important.

One of the reasons why people may not back up their bookmarks frequently is the relatively obscure location of the bookmarks datafile, which for non-techy users is a challange. Note that you don't have to go find the bookmarks file in order to back it up. Just open the bookmarks manager and use file|export to save a copy. People who are creating important data with their bookmarks (e.g. academics or writers doing research) should treat the bookmarks as they would a document they were editing. They should make *frequent* backups (like, hourly?). It is always possible for a general OS crash or power outage to cause loss of data, completely aside from any FireFox bugs.
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

One more point--although everyone *should* always back up important data all the time, I think there are probably very few among us that haven't, from time to time, gotten busy, or complacent, or forgetful, and have neglected to do back ups. Most of the time we're lucky, and don't lose any data.

When someone *does* lose data, they should be treated with sympathy and offered help (as has happend with *most*, but not all, of the posts here), rather than just being lectured.

I'm sure the lessons about the importance of backups will be self-evident to most people....
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mcm_ham
Posts: 1747
Joined: June 16th, 2004, 6:09 am
Location: Christchurch, New Zealand

Post by mcm_ham »

Anonymous wrote:2) However, it sounds like there may be some FireFox bug(s) which result in lost bookmarks. Since the bookmarks are really the primary user created data for FireFox, this should be taken very seriously. It is similar to losing a document that is being edited in a word processing program. It's a big deal. I would assume that there are FireFox developers that are working hard on this issue. Presumably none of them are posting (or even reading) this thread. It would be comforting if one of the developers would post SOMETHING indicating that this is considered important.


I'm not a developer but I know they need very specific information about the cause of the issue, otherwise if they don't know the error or can't reproduce it acurately how can you expect them to solve the problems. Your more then welcome to do a search for existing bugs that may have already been filed on these issues.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/query.cgi
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

Lost bookmarks...this is all well and good for the PC users. I'm using a Mac OSX-no bookmarks with the new installed updated Firefox. So any ideas on recovering them please-thanks
lucy_r
Guest

Post by lucy_r »

omg i lost all my bookmarks too!!! does anybody know how to get them back? they are VERY important to me!!!
SRSCS
Guest

Post by SRSCS »

Ok…now for the last several hours I have read everything I could find about bookmarks that just vanish for no apparent reason to no avail.

What I found is the following:

1.) Asked to create a new profile and I did.

Nope, that didn’t happen, checked my Profile Manager already with the little tutorial from VectorThunder.

2.) Only other way I could have lost my bookmarks (bookmarks.html) is if my OS crashed or FF locked up somehow and I did not exit it properly or I ctrl-alt-del to shutdown windows without letting FF properly shutdown.

Eh…WRONG…number two did not occur either…because I was using FF perfectly fine this morning, shut FF down was running a few other programs then turned my PC off for at least 6 hours. Came back and *POOF* everything was gone…not even the defaulted bookmarks were there. Everything was gone…

The bookmarks.html is empty in my Apps Data folder, there is no .bak file on my computer, no .chk files either nor bookmarks.html.moztmp. Nothing so far has assisted me in finding a solution so far here in the forums.

I will try and search for a file recovery program in a last stitch effort to find and recover my irreplaceable bookmarks.

If that fails, I’ll be forced to use my outdated IE favorites which I hope does not happen. They are at least a year outdated, and in that time I have several irreplaceable new bookmarks work related, and most importantly college related of a good amount of research performed over several of weeks that I at all costs cannot afford to lose. If everything fails it looks to be that I’ll have several sleepless nights ahead of me to re-do all my research.

I am awfully angry and disappointed with this happening on Firefox. This is a problem that SHOULD NOT be happening! And I wish I knew their was a possibility of this occurring when I switched from IE to Firefox.

Is there anybody out there with a solution for this specific problem? If so please post a SOLUTION guys and not some SHOULD HAVE, COULD HAVE information. I am not gaining anything from it, and neither are the other people out there that have the exact same problem. All it causes is more frustration that it appears there is no solution and we got royally screwed by firefox…
alienboy
Guest

Post by alienboy »

I'm running WinXP Pro, had a power cut last night, all Bookmarks disappeared, no trace of them in .bak files, only one profile, so i am assuming they are all lost. which is really annoying cos there is now no way to re-create all that lost research.

Have now installed the bookmark backup extension so should be ok for the future but why has such a fundamental problem been allowed to persist?

Now that firefox is spreading to the larger public, people like me, it is increasingly important that the browser is robust and reliable.

Further needed improvements include automatic updating and a much easier way to manage all the extensions et cetera.
SRSCS
Guest

Post by SRSCS »

Indeed

Does anybody now of a solution that worked for them that is not posted? I am very desperate to get my bookmarks back.

:(
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