From MozillaZine Knowledge Base

This article deals with problems adding, deleting, and making changes to bookmarks. For bookmarks that were saved previously but are now gone, see Lost bookmarks.

Read-only bookmarks file

Mozilla Suite/SeaMonkey and Firefox 2: If changes to bookmarks are not being saved when restarting the browser, the bookmarks.html or bookmarks.html.moztmp file in the profile folder may be "read-only" (Windows) or "locked" (Mac). Deleting or modifying bookmarks will also have no effect and the profile folder will fill up with multiple "bookmarks-<n>.html files, where <n> is a number. See Multiple profile files created for additional information.

Removing the "read-only" attribute or unlocking the file will again allow the bookmarks to be updated (bug 157152). To do so on Windows systems:

1. Navigate to the profile folder
2. Find bookmarks.html and (if it exists) bookmarks.html.moztmp
3. Right-click on the file, choose Properties
4. On the General tab, make sure "Read only" is not checked.
5. Press OK.

Firefox 3: Starting in Firefox 3, bookmarks are stored in the Firefox profile folder in the places.sqlite file. Make sure this file is not read-only or locked.

Places preferences - Firefox 3

If changes to bookmarks are not being saved after restarting Firefox 3, reset the browser.places preferences to the default settings: [1]

1. Enter about:config in the Location Bar
2. In the Filter box, type browser.places
3. Context-click (right-click) any preference with a user-set status and select "Reset".

Corrupt bookmarks file

Mozilla Suite/SeaMonkey and Firefox 2: In case your bookmarks.html file is corrupt, you can replace it with a backup copy. See Lost bookmarks - Replacing bookmarks with a backup file.

Firefox 3: Starting in Firefox 3, bookmarks and browsing history are stored in the "places.sqlite" file. If there is a problem with this file, it may cause bookmark changes to be lost when restarting the browser. If restoring a bookmark backup from within Firefox 3 doesn't help, you can try fixing this problem as follows: [2]

1. Export your bookmarks to an HTML file named "bookmarks.html" and place it in the Firefox profile folder.
   • To export your Firefox 3 bookmarks, go to "Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks -> Import and Backup -> Export HTML".
2. Close Firefox completely
3. Open the Firefox profile folder and delete the "places.sqlite" file.
4. It is probably also a good idea to delete localstore.rdf to remove the references to the old places file (you will need to add back any toolbar customizations).
5. Open the bookmarkbackups folder and move away all the .json backups to another location.

When you restart Firefox 3, it will import the bookmarks from "bookmarks.html" in the Firefox profile folder. Note: You may also need to use about:config to reset all of the browser.places preferences to the default settings (see above).

Add Bookmark dialog not working - Firefox

• A corrupt localstore.rdf file in your Firefox profile folder can cause this problem. To fix it, see this article.
• The Bookmark Duplicate Detector extension may cause the Add Bookmark dialog to fail [3]. If updating the extension doesn't help you should uninstall it.

Other solutions

Try the standard diagnostic steps. Problematic extensions may be causing the issue. Try running Firefox in Safe Mode and disable all extensions, or create a new profile for testing purposes. [4]