• How to import Firefox bookmarks from old PC to new one?

    From Lee@DLee122298@aol.com to alt.computer on Fri Jul 23 01:25:40 2021
    I just discovered that my bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox is mostly empty. I thought I had already managed to import or migrate them from my old HP PC (Windows 7) to my new Dell PC (Windows 10) in Firefox, but maybe I forgot or somehow made an error or mistake. So I tried copying & pasting my old Firefox profile, but still nothing shows up in bookmarks.
    Why not? What am I doing wrong? The "import bookmarks" function in Firefox doesn't seem to do anything either. PLEASE HELP!
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Win32 NewsLink 1.114
  • From Paul@nospam@needed.invalid to alt.computer on Fri Jul 23 09:29:52 2021
    Lee wrote:
    I just discovered that my bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox is mostly empty. I thought I had already managed to import or migrate them from my old HP PC (Windows 7) to my new Dell PC (Windows 10) in Firefox, but maybe I forgot or somehow made an error or mistake. So I tried copying & pasting my old Firefox profile, but still nothing shows up in bookmarks.

    Why not? What am I doing wrong? The "import bookmarks" function in Firefox doesn't seem to do anything either. PLEASE HELP!

    Normally,

    1) On old PC, Export Bookmarks
    2) On new PC, Import Bookmarks

    But there are other combinations for less-ready situations.

    Firefox keeps a folder of .jsonlz4 files. This is JSON (
    presumably Javascript lines of some sort) which has been
    compressed with LZ4 (the LZ4 was only used, to obfuscate
    the users bookmarks, and it's a silly waste of human
    neurons to have done that).

    In any case, you can try this. The tool knows how to open
    the file, so no rocket science is required :-) It's when
    humans want to look at the file, that it sucks as a format.

    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1138179

    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

    Import,Export = done with HTML files
    Backup,Restore = done with JSONLZ4 files <=== Place old JSONLZ4 file where tool
    can find it... Presumably in the
    new profile folder, same relative place.

    Using the search on your file system, you look
    for "profiles.ini". Many Mozilla tools use such
    things. When the search results come back, you look
    for the one with Firefox in the pathname. The Profiles
    themselves are stored very near to where the
    "profiles.ini" is located.

    A good tool for such a search, is Agent Ransack.
    The Free version is good enough for this job. The
    Free version uses brute force search on Windows
    (Linux has good enough search in its file explorer).

    https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

    If you open the profiles.ini with Notepad or a text editor,
    it shows the path to the profile as either a relative
    or an absolute reference. Relative means,
    relative to the level of the file system where the
    profiles.ini is stored.

    On Windows, people usually get flummoxed on the
    "hidden" Appdata folder in their home directory.
    To work with Appdata, you can make it visible.

    Path = xxx\yyy\zzz\www\mmm\nnn\Profiles.ini
    ^
    |
    +---- a hidden foldername here, might
    prevent easy work with Profiles.ini

    The usual recipe is to modify the File Explorer view
    to expose hidden objects. Which is not really all that
    convenient as a workaround, but here is an example.
    You use the Folder Options dialog and click the radio
    button to make certain item types visible. This is
    only necessary when the user tries to walk down the
    file tree to AppData, then Roaming, while trying
    to find the Mozilla and Firefox folders.

    https://www.ionos.ca/digitalguide/server/configuration/show-windows-appdata-folder/

    Anyway, I hope that's enough ideas to get you started.

    Paul
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Win32 NewsLink 1.114
  • From Lee@DLee122298@aol.com to alt.computer on Sat Jul 24 22:12:05 2021
    Yes - the problem has now been resolved. THANKS very much!
    On Friday, July 23, 2021 at 9:29:52 AM UTC-4, Paul wrote:
    Lee wrote:
    I just discovered that my bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox is mostly empty. I thought I had already managed to import or migrate them from my old HP PC (Windows 7) to my new Dell PC (Windows 10) in Firefox, but maybe I forgot or somehow made an error or mistake. So I tried copying & pasting my old Firefox profile, but still nothing shows up in bookmarks.

    Why not? What am I doing wrong? The "import bookmarks" function in Firefox doesn't seem to do anything either. PLEASE HELP!
    Normally,

    1) On old PC, Export Bookmarks
    2) On new PC, Import Bookmarks

    But there are other combinations for less-ready situations.

    Firefox keeps a folder of .jsonlz4 files. This is JSON (
    presumably Javascript lines of some sort) which has been
    compressed with LZ4 (the LZ4 was only used, to obfuscate
    the users bookmarks, and it's a silly waste of human
    neurons to have done that).

    In any case, you can try this. The tool knows how to open
    the file, so no rocket science is required :-) It's when
    humans want to look at the file, that it sucks as a format.

    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1138179

    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

    Import,Export = done with HTML files
    Backup,Restore = done with JSONLZ4 files <=== Place old JSONLZ4 file where tool
    can find it... Presumably in the
    new profile folder, same relative place.

    Using the search on your file system, you look
    for "profiles.ini". Many Mozilla tools use such
    things. When the search results come back, you look
    for the one with Firefox in the pathname. The Profiles
    themselves are stored very near to where the
    "profiles.ini" is located.

    A good tool for such a search, is Agent Ransack.
    The Free version is good enough for this job. The
    Free version uses brute force search on Windows
    (Linux has good enough search in its file explorer).

    https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

    If you open the profiles.ini with Notepad or a text editor,
    it shows the path to the profile as either a relative
    or an absolute reference. Relative means,
    relative to the level of the file system where the
    profiles.ini is stored.

    On Windows, people usually get flummoxed on the
    "hidden" Appdata folder in their home directory.
    To work with Appdata, you can make it visible.

    Path = xxx\yyy\zzz\www\mmm\nnn\Profiles.ini
    ^
    |
    +---- a hidden foldername here, might
    prevent easy work with Profiles.ini

    The usual recipe is to modify the File Explorer view
    to expose hidden objects. Which is not really all that
    convenient as a workaround, but here is an example.
    You use the Folder Options dialog and click the radio
    button to make certain item types visible. This is
    only necessary when the user tries to walk down the
    file tree to AppData, then Roaming, while trying
    to find the Mozilla and Firefox folders.

    https://www.ionos.ca/digitalguide/server/configuration/show-windows-appdata-folder/

    Anyway, I hope that's enough ideas to get you started.

    Paul
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Win32 NewsLink 1.114