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Firefox Lost My Bookmarks

May 6, 2007 by debbie T | Firefox Browser

UPDATED for Firefox 3

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 ApplicationData
  4. Mozilla
  5. Firefox
  6. Profiles

IMPORTANT: If you do not see the ApplicationData 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 ApplicationData 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 from the Firefox profile folder to your Desktop or 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.

See below for the specific instructions for either Windows or Mac

For Windows users:

Import Firefox 3 bookmarks for Windows

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

  1. In the Manager window, click on the Import & Backup link from the toolbar, then choose “Import HTML”
  2. Choose “From an HTML File”
  3. Navigate to the file you copied into My Documents, and choose that file.
  4. Click Open

For Mac Users:

Import Firefox 3 bookmarks for Mac OS X

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

  1. In the Manager window, click on the little icon for Import & Backup on the toolbar (See screenshot above) then choose “Import HTML”
  2. Choose “From an HTML File”
  3. Navigate to the file you copied to your hard drive, 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 and Restoring Firefox Bookmarks

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

Click the Import & Backup link from the toolbar, then choose Backup. Save the file.

This will create a Bookmarks.json file using the current date for easy storage.

When you want to restore the backup, choose the Restore function on the Import & Backup menu.

Suggestion: backup the file to My Documents or Desktop in a sub-folder named “Firefox Bookmarks.” Include the date when you name the file 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.

IMPORTANT: Backup 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 54 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


  35. Thank you so much! This seems to happen to me once or twice every couple of months. I actually searched “I’ve had it with FireFox where are my bookmarks?” You and this are a Godsend…….bookmarking….


    Comment by Lyn on July 11th, 2008


  36. OH MY GOD, BLESS YOU. THE FIRS TIME THIS HAPPENED TO ME WAS ABOUT A MONTH AGO. I WAS DEVASTATED BECAUSE I HAVE TO BOOKMARK SITES THAT HELP ME TO DO MY JOB. LOOSING THEM THE FIRST TIME TOOK ME UP UNTIL THIS MONTH TO CATCH UP ON MY WORK. THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN LAST NIGHT MY HEART START BEATING SO FAST BECAUSE, I WAS SO AFRAID THAT I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS AGAIN. I SEARCH THE NET DILIGENTLY LOOKING FOR AN ANSWER I WAS UP UNTIL 3AM THIS MORNING. I PRAYED LAST NIGHT THAT GOD WOULD HELP ME FIND MY BOOKMARKS THEY MEANT SO MUCH TO MY WORK AND ALL THE SOLUTION I FOUND LAST NIGHT DID NOT WORK THEN THIS MORNING FRUSTRATED AS I WAS I STUMBLED UPON YOU SITE. DID WHAT YOU SAID AND BINGO I’M BACK IN BUSINESS AND WILL BACK MY BOOKMARKS UP LIKE YOU SAID AND JUST LIKE YOU SAID FOR THIS DAY FORWARD.

    I THANK GOD FOR YOU AND PRAY YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY.

    SW


    Comment by SW on August 18th, 2008


  37. I have a portable version of firefox 3.

    Will i be able to import this stuff to that copy?


    Comment by Chris on September 6th, 2008


  38. Hello Chris,
    I don’t use a portable copy of FF, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t be the same. Perhaps you should just try it and see if it works. :)


    Comment by debbie T on September 6th, 2008


  39. I HAVE 2 SAY THAT THIS REALLY WORKS. I SEARCHED DAYS FOR A SOLUTION AFTER UPDATING MY FIREFOX I LOST HUNDREDS OF IMPORTANT BOOKMARKS. NOW I AM SO HAPPY! IT HAS MADE MY DAY! GOD BLESS! :-)


    Comment by J on October 29th, 2008


  40. I’m moving from tiger to leopard and this really has helped! Now I’m going to subscribe to your website. It’s excellent.


    Comment by Gadgetmo on February 19th, 2009


  41. Thanks everyone for the great comments!


    Comment by debbie T on February 23rd, 2009


  42. Hi
    I am having the same problem as Q34 - the Safari problem

    Thanks to your guidance I am making progress recovering my bookmarks - I’ve found the fle in the archive from Archive & Instal - bookmarks.html but when I go to File>Import the only option that I have is to Import from Safari -cookies. Any ideas? You didn’t reply to 34 - does this mean there is no solution - other than to key them in from the HTML file?

    I’m running a Mac G4 with Leopard and Firefox 3.0.6


    Comment by Ian Kerr on March 1st, 2009


  43. Thanks for commenting Ian.

    Hmm, you are right. I did find the answer though. Let me update the tutorial. I have a feeling it might have changed possibly with a Firefox upgrade.

    I will upload a new screenshot of where to find the import.


    Comment by debbie T on March 1st, 2009


  44. All set, Ian. I hope the new updated tutorial will help. Let me know, and hopefully it works for you!


    Comment by debbie T on March 1st, 2009


  45. Thanks Debbie - what an obscure little routine! In practice I had to restore from the most recent .json files( per your tutorial!!) - rather than import an html files - all the .html files were much older.
    Whatever - it worked brilliantly - thank you


    Comment by Ian Kerr on March 1st, 2009


  46. Great help! I have been working on this for a couple days and everything I tried didn’t work or was to hard to understand. Yours was quick and simple, thanks alot!


    Comment by Brian on March 3rd, 2009



  47. Great stuff.
    However all the advice I have found on Internet concern people that know they are going to change computers. I didn’t know that lightening was going to destroy my motherboard. The hard disc has been transfered to this new one - how do I get them back?
    thanks.. anybody?

    Comment by david on May 14th, 2009



  48. I am not sure what your question is, David. If your hard drive has been transferred to a new computer, all your bookmarks should be intact.

    Or maybe I am not understanding you?

    If you mean that someone transferred only your data, then you will need to ask them to also transfer your profile settings. The firefox bookmarks are located there, as stated in the article.

    And please remember to backup your bookmarks on a regular basis from now on!

    Comment by debbie T on May 14th, 2009



  49. Thank you Debbie,
    your reassurance that they must be there somewhere
    led me to search for an hour or two. Ifound it underC:\Ancien_disque\Documents and Settings\Utilisateur\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\cwzgf19o.default\bookmarks.html.

    Seems very easy now, thank you again,
    david

    Comment by david on May 15th, 2009



  50. Great, glad you found them, David. Now backup backup backup! LOL ;)

    Comment by debbie T on May 15th, 2009



  51. I am a very simple computer user. When I click on the word “Bookmarks” on my toolbar, all I want is a list of my bookmarks. So, how do I get rid of all the clutter? Headers like: subscribe to this page, bookmark all tabs, bookmarks toolbar, hide this menu. Even worse: when I click on organize bookmarks, it opens a “Library” that has all kinds of clutter: history, tags, all bookmarks, bookmarks toolbar above “bookmarks menu” where at last I find my bookmarks. At the bottom of this list is another useless phrase: “unsorted bookmarks.” Help. All I need is a simple list.

    Comment by Freddy Sweet on June 12th, 2009



  52. Hello Freddy,

    Try this google search

    There are plenty of online tutorials for organizing your firefox bookmarks. Good luck!

    Comment by debbie T on June 12th, 2009



  53. Thanks, Debbie T,
    I read a lot of the information you suggested, but those posts don’t address my issue. I have no problem putting my hundreds of bookmarks in folders. The problem is how to get rid of the headings that Firefox now has locked in. And
    those headings were not in earlier versions of the browser. That’s where the clutter is.
    Thanks,
    Freddy

    Comment by Freddy Sweet on June 14th, 2009



  54. Don’t know what to tell you Freddy, I guess you’ll have to take it up with the Firefox programmers.
    Good luck!
    :)

    Comment by debbie T on June 14th, 2009

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