Sunday, November 06, 2011

How To Restore Firefox Bookmarks

One of the things that I migrate to new computer systems that I build or but are my bookmarks. I have a collection of a few hundred sites in my bookmarks that I use regularly thanks to browsers recommending bookmarks when entering text into the address bar.

A corrupt or accidentally deleted bookmarks file could have a serious impact on my work day. Most modern web browsers come with synchronization and backup options that can be used to restore data in the browser. The majority of those features need to be activated though before they can be used to restore data.

Firefox users who cannot access all or part of their bookmarks anymore can make use of the browser’s built-in restoration option to restore bookmarks in the browser. This feature is enabled by default. Here is how it is done.

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-b to open the bookmarks manager. Locate the Import and Backup menu at the top and click it to display its menu options.

firefox restore bookmarks

Move the mouse cursor over the Restore menu to display a list of bookmark backups that can be restored. Firefox by default backs up the bookmarks once per day (if the browser is used).

restore firefox bookmarks

Click on a data to restore that bookmarks backup in the browser. Please note that Firefox will overwrite the existing bookmarks with the backup. Bookmarks that you have added in the meantime will not be available once the restoration has completed.

Firefox users can make use of the export bookmarks to HTML in the same menu to create a manual backup of their current bookmarks file. It is always a good idea to backup the file before restorations. This manual copy can then be restored by selecting the Import bookmarks from HTML option in the same menu.

Bookmarks can also also be backed up as JSON files instead by selecting the Backup option of the menu. These bookmark backups can then be restored via the Restore > Choose File option.

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