Oops, I didn't see this earlier question. I posted an initial response here: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1107774#answer-839083

I'll repeat that:

Since you are able to use Firefox, try opening it from inside the browser. Either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show in Finder" button. This should launch a new window directly into your profile folder. Then you can investigate exactly where it is located on disk.

More info: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data

Bookmarks

The Refresh feature should have automatically preserved your bookmarks. That part didn't work? What file are you planning to copy? Here are my thoughts on two ways to do that:

(1) places.sqlite - database combining bookmarks and history

You can copy this file from the old profile folder into the new one, but make sure Firefox is fully closed first.

(2) Restore bookmark backup file

You can use the steps in the following article, but instead of choosing a dated backup from the menu, select Choose File and point Firefox up to the desktop, into Old Firefox Data, into your old settings folder, into the bookmarkbackups folder, and then selected a file to restore. This will completely replace the default set of bookmarks in your new profile.

More on profile files: Recover important data from an old profile

Thanks for your quick response. That did work. I was able to find my profile and copy the old sqplaces.sqlite into the folder. Somehow this old file didn’t have the old bookmarks in it. Not sure what happened there but at least I now know how to do this.

Thanks for your help.

Steve Krebs

srkrebs said

Somehow this old file didn’t have the old bookmarks in it. Not sure what happened there but at least I now know how to do this.

Did the second approach work to get your missing bookmarks or was that also unhelpful?

I tried the second approach before I started the help thread. It didn't help. I'm still copying the contents of the places.sqlite and these don't seem to be different in the backup or the new profile. I also went through the bookmark backup/restore procedure and just restored from the Old Data Folder on my desktop. Same as the current bookmarks. Also, there was only one bookmark backup file to choose from but the instructions say that up to 10 files should be in there. It appears that the backup stuff is just what you have when you first load Firefox.

Hi Steve, the file names of bookmark backup files are coded with the number of bookmarks in the file. For example:

bookmarks-2016-02-02_9133_SA...==.jsonlz4

Do the backup file(s) in Old Firefox Data have a large number of bookmarks, large enough to realistically be your missing bookmarks?

What kind of issues did you had that you decided to use the Refresh feature in Firefox to create a new profile?

Did you had problems with bookmarks or history that would indicate a problem with places.sqlite?

Yes, that was lost in the shuffle. The reason I did this was because of a scrolling problem. When I tried to scroll down I would get a hesitation. This kept getting worse until I would get the busy circle on my cursor and several seconds would go by then it would jump to where it it would have been if there had been no hesitation. In other words it kept track of my scrolling while frozen then jumped to the new scroll point. I hope that makes sense. This became quite annoying. It started happening this Fall with an update. Not sure which because the problem is progressive. It is apparently still there. I'm starting to notice the hesitation again and it's getting worse. I'm even seeing it as I type this. Letters stop coming for a couple of seconds then catch up.

Oh yes and to answer jsch2000, the backup book marks file only shows the number 4 at the end. I probably had 50 plus organized into various folders.

Thanks to you both for your help on this. I am ready to go back to an older version of Firefox and refuse updates for a while.

srkrebs said

Oh yes and to answer jsch2000, the backup book marks file only shows the number 4 at the end. I probably had 50 plus organized into various folders.

Hmm, there's always a 4 at the end of the file extension (jsonlz4), the critical number is the one after the date:

bookmarks-2016-02-02_9133_SA...==.jsonlz4

Usually that number is going to be at least 8, since a fresh installation of Firefox has a bunch of starter bookmarks and smart bookmark folders.

If the Old Firefox Data folder doesn't have the full set, could you check one other place: open your current profile folder as before, either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show in Finder" button. This should launch a new window directly into your profile folder. Then click "up" one level to the Profiles folder and see whether there are any additional semi-randomly-named profile folders there that might contain your data.

Here is the backup book mark file name in the back up folder: bookmarks-2016-01-24_14_NnYxVcRHJzI+rlLkzP4eBA==.jsonlz4

There are two folders under Profile: c0eo7t4u.default-1453653553513 i6snobuo.default

I was using the former.

I also just tried restarting Firefox. This did help the problem. This did not appear to help the problem before. I used to have Firefox setup of delete all cookies when restarted. I noticed that I can no longer do this. Also, apparently deleting history deletes cookies and bookmarks in the Preferences.

srkrebs said

Here is the backup book mark file name in the back up folder: bookmarks-2016-01-24_14_NnYxVcRHJzI+rlLkzP4eBA==.jsonlz4

The 14 bookmarks from Jan. 24th probably are default bookmarks. The ones you added since then would only be in the places.sqlite database if Firefox didn't successfully create a backup since then.

There are two folders under Profile:
c0eo7t4u.default-1453653553513
i6snobuo.default

If you check that second folder, is there anything in there from around the correct date/time, or does it look like a random leftover?

I used to have Firefox setup of delete all cookies when restarted. I noticed that I can no longer do this. Also, apparently deleting history deletes cookies and bookmarks in the Preferences.

On the Preferences page, Privacy section, make sure you set the drop-down control to "Firefox will: Use custom settings for history" in order to gain access to individual controls, including clearing history at shutdown.

Clearing history may clear cookies -- that is one of the options -- but should not touch bookmarks if this feature is working correctly.

OK. I fixed the options under Preferences->Privacy.

Those two folders are not in the backup folder on my desk top, they are in the profiles folder reached from the Troubleshooting page. The second folder does contain a bookmarks backup folder that contains 15 files that indicate in their file names up to 94 bookmarks and various dates before 1/24/16. Interesting.

Sorry for the delayed reply; work intervened. :-)

If you think that other profile might be your "real" one, you can quit out of Firefox and use the Profile Manager to switch over to it. This article has more info on how to do that: Profile Manager - Create, remove or switch Firefox profiles (please don't delete any profiles, it's too easy to delete the wrong one).