How to Backup & Restore Firefox Bookmarks
Everyday we find a lot of useful sites on the web and we bookmark some or all of them. These favorite (bookmarked) sites are important so it is essential that, as we back up our documents and our emails, we also back up our list of favorites (bookmarks), so that we can restore them in case of a disk damage or a disk format.
This article explains how to backup and restore (transfer) your bookmarks to another computer.
Mozilla Firefox stores all your information (bookmarks, passwords, settings & extensions) under “Profiles” folder in a folder with the “.default” word included on its name, usually found under this path in your computer:
- %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
e.g “%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\5m6zzekg.default-1384164605892\
The default full path of Firefox Profile store location is:
Windows XP:
- C:\Documents and Settings\<YOUR_USERNAME>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile_Name_Folder>.default\
e.g. “C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\5m6zzekg.default-1384164605892\”
Windows 8, 7, Vista:
- C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile_Name_Folder>.default\
e.g.: “C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\5m6zzekg.default-1384164605892\
* If you found more than one profile folder under “Profiles” folder, then you can find the active profile folder by using the steps bellow:
How to find Firefox Active Profile folder location on your disk
1. Go to Firefox Help Menu and choose “Troubleshooting Information”
2. In Troubleshooting Information window, press the “Show Folder” button to navigate to your profile folder.
How to Backup & Restore Firefox Bookmarks
Method 1: Backup Firefox Bookmarks using “JSON” file
Firefox automatically creates a backup copy of your bookmarks inside the “bookmarkbackups” folder (found under Firefox’s profile folder). Inside “bookmarkbackups” folder, you can find several files (max 10 files) named “bookmarks-YY-MM-DD.json” ** YY-MM-DD = Year-Month-Date (of backup) e.g.: “bookmarks-2013-12-17_5.json”. So if you want to backup your Firefox bookmarks the only thing that you have to do is to copy the latest Firefox bookmarks backup file (e.g.: “bookmarks-2014-01-30_1412.json”) to your backup location (e.g. your External hard disk).*
* At this point, I prefer to copy the entire “bookmarkbackups” folder just in case of data corruption.
How to Restore Firefox Bookmarks using “JSON” file
If you have want to restore (or transfer) your Firefox Bookmarks to another computer:
1. Open Mozilla Firefox.
2. From Firefox main menu, go to “Bookmarks” and select “Show All Bookmarks”.
3. At “Library” window, navigate to “Import and Backup” > “Restore” and select “Choose file”.
4. Select the “*.JSON” file that you want to import (e.g. “bookmarks-2013-12-16_5.json”) and press “Open”.
Method 2: Backup Firefox Bookmarks using Firefox's IMPORT/EXPORT feature
1. Open Mozilla Firefox
2. From Firefox main menu, go to “Bookmarks” and select “Show All Bookmarks”.
3. At “Library” window, navigate to “Import and Backup” and select “Export Bookmarks to HTML”.
4. Specify the destination location and the file name for the exported bookmarks file (e.g.”bookmarks”) and press “Save”.
How to Restore Firefox Bookmarks using Firefox's IMPORT/EXPORT feature
1. Open Mozilla Firefox
2. From Firefox main menu, go to “Bookmarks” and select “Show All Bookmarks”.
3. At “Library” window, navigate to “Import and Backup” and select “Import Bookmarks from HTML”.
4. Select the bookmarks HTML file that you want to import (e.g.: “bookmarks”) and press “Open”.
That's it.
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