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Firefox Lost My Bookmarks

May 6, 2007 by debbieT | Firefox Browser

I have heard many users complain that Firefox lost their bookmarks for some reason or another. It can probably happen to anyone, although it has never happened to me. I don’t know if I am lucky, or perhaps it is because I empty the cache regularly.

(Read Mozilla’s Troubleshooting article on Lost Bookmarks)

Find Your Bookmarks & Resore Them

On a Windows XP system, it should be easy to find your bookmarks file, then restore it.

  1. In the My Computer directory/folder, choose the C: Drive.
  2. Choose the Documents and Settings folder;
  3. Then your user folder (what ever your user name is, there will be a folder for it)
  4. Next, Application Data folder
  5. Choose Firefox
  6. Then choose the Profiles folder.

IMPORTANT: If you do not see the Application Data, your system is probably not set up to view hidden files/folders. In that case, while in My Computer (or any Windows Explorer window), choose Tools > Folder Options > View > select the radio button next to Show hidden files and folders. The Application Data folder should now be viewable.

For Windows Vista users, follow this path to find the Firefox profile folder:

In My Computer, choose the C: drive:

  1. Then, Users
  2. Then your user folder (what ever your user name is, there will be a folder for it)
  3. Followed by AppData
  4. Roaming
  5. Mozilla
  6. Firefox
  7. Profiles

IMPORTANT: If you do not see the AppData folder, your system is probably not set up to view hidden files/folders. In that case, while in My Computer (or any Windows Explorer window), choose Organize > Folder and Search Options > Folder Options > View > select the radio button next to Show hidden files and folders. The AppData folder should now be viewable.

For Mac OS X Users,

  1. Launch the Finder
  2. The bookmarks.html file is found in your user Library
  3. Choose Application Support
  4. Then Firefox
  5. Next Profiles

If you lost your first profile, it is possible Firefox created a new one, so there could be two (or more) profile folders, you will have to check both of them for the specific bookmarks file you want.

Look for bookmarks.html; double click to open it, and it should launch the file in Firefox. If not, right click on the file and choose Open with>Firefox.

Check over the contents, and if it looks like all your original bookmarks, that is the file you want to backup.

Copy and paste the bookmarks.html file into your My Documents folder for save keeping.

Note: It is possible that Firefox might automatically back up your bookmarks for you….in that profile, you might also see a folder named “bookmarkbackups.” Open that folder, and check to see if one of those backup .html files contains all your original bookmarks.

Import Bookmarks Back into Firefox

Okay, now that your bookmarks file is safely backed up to your My Documents, you can easily import it back into Firefox.

While Firefox is open, choose Bookmarks>Organize Bookmarks. This will launch the Bookmark Manager.

  1. In the Manager window, choose File>Import
  2. Choose “From File”
  3. Navigate to the file you copied into My Documents, and choose that file.
  4. Click Open

This will import all the bookmarks from that file into Firefox.

Lesson learned: back up your Firefox bookmarks on a regular basis, and even if Firefox crashes and loses your bookmarks, you can easily restore the backup file.

Backing Up Firefox Bookmarks

An easy way to back up your Firefox bookmarks, in the Bookmark Manager, (remember? choose Bookmarks>Organize Bookmarks)

Choose File>Export

This will create a copy of the bookmarks.html file - navigate to the location on your hard drive where you keep your backup files.

Suggestion: save it in My Documents in a sub-folder named “Firefox Bookmarks.” Include the date when you name the file (ie bookmarks-05-06-07.html) so you know at a glance how old your back up is. Keep several backup files in case one doesn’t work.

Hopefully it won’t happen again, but if Firefox loses your bookmarks in the future, follow the same import instructions listed above.

Export your bookmarks every week or month, and also remember to back up the files to a CD or an external hard drive in case your hard drive dies.

Moving Your Firefox Files to a New Computer

NEW TIP: If you are moving to a new computer or reinstalling your operating system, it is easy to save your Firefox bookmarks, cookies, passwords, preferences, extensions, themes, etc.

Find the whole Firefox folder (including the profile subfolder) and just drag it to a CD or USB Flash drive for safe keeping.

On your new system, after you install Firefox, delete the newly created Firefox folder, and drag over the saved folder from your backup. Launch Firefox and your browser should be as it was.

Mac OS X users, you might also need to copy/save your preference file. Found in Library>Preferences> copy the file named “org.mozilla.firefox.plist” and replace it on the new system.

Good luck!

There are 34 comments

  1. Thanks!! That was a great help!

    Comment by Claire on May 20th, 2007

  2. God bless you you saved my life i had all my work in my bookmarks thanks you so much

    Comment by Steve on June 16th, 2007

  3. Thank you so much You saved my life!

    Comment by Miharuru on June 18th, 2007

  4. I only found this site after trying to find a way, and trying the following.Surprisingly, it saved all the urls.

    You can also click bookmarks,click organise bookmarks, and then click edit, click select all, right click copy, and paste to notepad.

    You can also paste into word, but then you have to hover over the name to see the url, then hold down control and click the name- not a good way.

    Comment by Jim on July 3rd, 2007

  5. I was close to actually bashing my computer with a hammer when it suddenly lost all my bookmarks. Thank you so much!

    Comment by Chad on July 12th, 2007

  6. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I had over a hundred and fifty bookmarks, some very important, that I thought was lost forever. Your instructions were too easy.

    Comment by Don on August 26th, 2007

  7. Goodness. Bless you for putting this up. I was livid when my bookmarks had suddenly just vanished into thin air. All I had done was click FF to open a window and it started loading very, very slowly…imagine my shock to see all my bookmarks gone.

    Thanks to you I’ve managed to snag them all back again. Thank you very much!

    Comment by Michelle Taylor on October 7th, 2007

  8. Just a quick note to let you know - I lost half my bookmarks this morning, and your post was the clearest, simplest, and most user-friendly I found (I searched via Google, as the Firefox forums were’nt available for some reason…) I followed your directions and successfully retrieved the bookmarks I lost. THANK YOU!!!! Now I’m going to follow your directions on backing up bookmarks!

    Comment by Mike Ambrose on January 12th, 2008

  9. So glad to hear my tutorial helped!! Thanks for all your comments everyone!

    Comment by debbieT on January 12th, 2008

  10. What do I do if there’s no Firefox folder after I’ve brought up Application Data? Have I lost my bookmarks for good?

    Comment by Richard on January 25th, 2008

  11. Richard, have you tried searching for the bookmarks.html file? Both Windows and Mac have a search feature to find any files on your hard drive.

    Try that. You might have changed the default location of where firefox saves it’s information.

    Good luck!

    Comment by debbie T on January 27th, 2008

  12. Yes, I was able to retrieve the file by searching through Windows. By the way, I concur with the other posters: yours was by far the most comprehensible explanation of how to retrieve lost bookmarks.

    Comment by Richard on January 27th, 2008

  13. Thanks so much Richard, and I am glad that you found the file. Now make sure it’s backed up regularly!!! :)

    Comment by debbie T on January 27th, 2008

  14. Didn’t work for me :( My backups section just had the few new bookmarks I have added in the past few days…thanks so much for the tip, though, and I’m so glad it worked for so many! :)

    Comment by Claire on January 28th, 2008

  15. Hi Claire, the problem you experienced was due to not finding the file immediately. As soon as you added a new bookmark, (after they were missing), it overwrote the file.

    When your bookmarks are missing, find the file right away!

    Comment by debbieT on January 28th, 2008

  16. As with all the other voices above I thank you for your clear and most helpful instructions. The file I found had an older version of my bookmarks but it was better than nothing at all. Thanks again.

    Comment by Lauran on February 8th, 2008

  17. Thank you! I do a lot of research and without my bookmarks I feel like in the Stone Ages. Amazingly I had been in FireFox’s support page and it was so complicated that it was of no use. My husband got me the phone of a 3rd party provider and, in the meantime, I decided to Google “lost firefox bookmarks mac” and there was you. It was so simple and IT WORKED. I got my bookmarks back!!!

    Comment by Yvonne on February 8th, 2008

  18. Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to comment, Yvonne and Lauran. I am really thrilled that the tutorial helped both of you!

    Comment by debbieT on February 8th, 2008

  19. HUGELY helpful. Easy to follow. You should run the world.

    Comment by JeffG on February 12th, 2008

  20. Oh my god u juz saved my life.. i was abt to give up! Thanks

    Comment by Xiao-Lei on February 18th, 2008

  21. Thanks for helping me, i lost 4 years worth of bookmarks and now their back!

    Comment by Jeff on March 6th, 2008

  22. another thank you from someone you have helped a lot. same story, i lost important bookmarks, which are irreplaceable. to manually search for the sites would have taken an enormous amount of time, plus i guess i can only remember only 1% of them. so thanks a lot!!! you saved me a lot of time and of course my bookmarks.:) also your instruction was the simplest one to follow. i found several, but picked your site. i was right in choosing you. keep up the great work. God bless you. :)

    Comment by jovy on March 13th, 2008

  23. wow, thank you everyone for your comments. I am shocked that so many of you are finding the article helpful!!! It makes me smile!!!

    Comment by debbieT on March 13th, 2008

  24. Thank you man, you saved my school year. Wouldn’t have passed some classes if I didn’t find my bookmarks again, because I got all my references there for all my work :)

    Comment by StianFre on March 21st, 2008

  25. Wow, thank you so much, I had a lot of references for a research paper I’ve been writing saved in those bookmarks! It would have taken hours to find them again! Thank you!!!

    Comment by Laura on April 3rd, 2008

  26. OMG thank you do much!! I am a graduate student writing my thesis that’s due in two weeks and went to start my bibliography and all my bookmarks were gone. I do not know what I would have done! Good Bless!

    Comment by Jazz on April 13th, 2008

  27. You are just gr888888!!!

    Thanks so much….

    Comment by ajay on April 15th, 2008

  28. THANK YOU!!!!!!!

    Comment by Brittney on May 1st, 2008

  29. You saved my butt today! I’m so grateful, I even blogged about it (the link is attached to my username).

    Comment by DOSGuy on May 8th, 2008

  30. Whew!. Opened my bookmarks to find they only went to “F”. Your tech support helped! Thanks. Will bookmark this too!

    Comment by Carla on May 14th, 2008

  31. Didn’t work for me. My Firefox is in Irish, and doesn’t let you browse your way to the folder where the bookmarks are.

    Comment by Pageturners on May 18th, 2008

  32. Thank you! Thank you! My Firefox got corrupted and had deleted all of its bookmarks. So I had to reinstall and so on. I dreaded putting in the bookmarks one by one, but your page saved my sanity. My Firefox is now sweet as and working fine with all of its original bookmarks. Again, I thank you will all my heart.

    Comment by Heather on May 23rd, 2008

  33. So what you have here REALLY helped me. One small detail is that I didn’t have to copy and paste or backup anything, there was a bookmarks.bak file right in the mozilla application data, so I just imported that and everything was good. thanks for this information. Very valuable!

    Comment by Kurtis Lane on May 31st, 2008

  34. didn’t quite work for me on my mac. I found my bookmarks, but when I selected “import” there was no option to import from file, just from safari. At least I know where to find them now, so thank you!

    Comment by Rachel on June 21st, 2008

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