Re: How to import Firefox bookmarks from old PC to new one?

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