It's really strange that if you copied places.sqlite over and Firefox loaded it with all your history that it somehow lost the bookmarks. They are completely integrated into a single database.

Could you try copying it over again? Make sure Firefox is closed when you drop the file into the active profile folder.

Two users have recently posted about a problem where their files in bookmarkbackups are empty and/or 0 bytes in size. Can you check the size of the files in that folder to see whether they are large enough to plausibly contain your bookmarks?

Make sure to delete other places files like places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite.wal in the Firefox profile folder that might be present.

If you aren't able to restore bookmarks then this usually indicates that the places.sqlite is corrupted (i.e. has one or more corrupted entries).

Did this file work well in the previous setup? Was that setup using the same Firefox version?

Note that current Firefox versions show the number of bookmarks in the name of the JSON backup: xx in bookmarks-####-##-##_xx.json

the .jsn files are all 3 or 4kb

the places.sqlite file is 10,240 kb and is definitely there

as for the places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite.wal file, they are in the profiles folder when firefox is running but i cant delete them then since it says they are in use, but when i close firefox they disappear?

as far as I knew the files worked fine. i downloaded firefox in september and can remember it updating a few times in 2013, did the newest version come out recently? my j.son files only show the date not the number in the file name, so they're from the old version?

It is OK when the places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite.wal file disappear when you close Firefox. Those are temp files used by SQLite and are normally only present when Firefox is running and only pose a problem if they are still there after you have closed Firefox.

The places.sqlite file defaults to 10,240 KB and if necessary is incremented in 10 MB chunks.

If the bookmark backups are only a few KB then they won't have your bookmarks.
Note that current Firefox releases have the number of bookmarks in the JSON as part of the file name (xx in bookmarks-####-##-##_xx.json)

Hi DIYRacer, Firefox should reconcile the places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite.wal files with the places.sqlite file when it exits. You would only need to delete them if Firefox fails to clean them up and you want a fresh start.

right, so how on earth did i lose my bookmarks? i followed the instructions from the website on how to back up a profile exactly?

Hi DIYRacer, what were the steps you followed that relate to bookmarks?

For example:

(1) With Firefox closed, copy all files from your old profile folder to backup media, including the places.sqlite file

(2) With Firefox closed, copy all files from backup media into your new profile folder, including the places.sqlite file

And then start Firefox. And at that point you found your history but your bookmarks were missing? I have no explanation for that since they are both in the same file.

It is best to only copy the sqlite files that you need and leave out other files like localstore.rdf and prefs.js
For the passwords you need signons.sqlite and key3.db.
For stored intermediate certificates you need the cert8.db file.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

yes thats exactly what i did, has firefox been updated in the last few months since this is all i can imagine has caused this?

Losing bookmarks suddenly is usually caused by a corruption of the places.sqlite file.
Sometimes the Places Maintenance extension is able to repair the file.
In other cases you need to remove/rename the places.sqlite file to make Firefox rebuild the bookmarks from a JSON backup that hopefully still has them.
If this doesn't work then you need to restore them manually from an older JSON backup.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

so delete the places.sqlite file?

You can rename the places.sqlite file or move the file to a safe location in case you need this file as it is possible that there is still useful content in it.