1725736 - An important Bookmark folder disappeared again! (Reported before)

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[wayne]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0

Steps to reproduce:

No intervention.

Actual results:

An important Bookmark folder disappeared again! This time named Cell Phones, I believe. Last week or so, it was a Bookmark folder titled Reviews, I believe. Both are root folders.

I looked in nearby folders to see if they were in any and found neither.

This is happened several times and I am very tired of it, especially when the Bookmark folders are very important.

Expected results:

They should not disappear on their own! If they do, they should be easy to find using a Search. A search on Cell Phones, for instance, returns many results but there is NO indication where the results are located.

In the meantime, I need assistance to find the missing Bookmark folders as soon as possible and so far, there has been no response to my latest message on the Mozilla Support Forum.

Thank you.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Bookmarks & History' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Simona Badau, Desktop QA]

I haven't seen any bookmarks missing issues on Nightly 93.0a1 or Firefox 91. Have you tried the solution given here?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recover-lost-or-missing-bookmarks#w_my-bookmarks-have-disappeared

Comment 3

[wayne]

The solution does not address just one or two missing Bookmarks but the rest are available so it does not apply to my situation. It was fairly easy to restore a missing Windows Explorer Favorite but it appears that Firefox programmers never thought a person may need to restore one or more bookmarks while keeping the current Bookmarks.

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Do you use Firefox Sync?

Comment 5

[wayne]

I do use Firefox Sync. The computer Bookmarks have disappeared on my main computer, the computer I use most of the time. On my second computer, I have not noticed any Bookmarks disappearing. At least one time a Bookmark disappeared, I found that the contents of a Bookmark in the root of a Bookmark folder or all at the bottom of the list in a Bookmark after the folder icons. This has not happened lately.

Lately, the last few months, I have not noticed any Bookmarks that have disappeared. I do have a large Bookmark file, ~7.3 MB shown in the Library so perhaps this is a factor. I currently have Firefox version 93.0.

A huge problem I have reported is once a Bookmark is missing, it is very difficult to find and restore the one Bookmark folder.

Thanks

Comment 6

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

As Sync is in use, we feel that this might be the most likely reason. The large bookmark file could imply that you are potentially hitting a limit of Sync, though I'm not sure what the limit is.

Comment 7

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

Sorry you are having this problem. It might be difficult to track down now, but if you enter about:sync-log in the address bar and can see any logs from roughly the time this happened, they might give us some clues.

Having more detailed logs enabled might help us should this happen in the future - see https://wiki.mozilla.org/CloudServices/Sync/File_a_desktop_bug#Get_detailed_Sync_logs for more information.

Comment 8

[wayne]

This particular Bookmarks issue occurred months ago, although recently I had another more serious issue, which is posted at: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1742920. When I went to about:sync-log, nothing was listed under "Name, Size, Last Modified." The only active part to click on was, "Up to a higher level directory." If I click on, "Up to a higher level directory" twice, I do get some other items to click on, one which is logs. If I click on logs, then I just get, no listing under Name but, "Up to a higher level directory again."

Comment 9

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

sorry you are having this trouble. about:sync-log will be empty if you haven't connected sync, and from the sounds of bug 1742920, you didn't have sync connected when you had that problem, so if that's the case, then that is expected. I mentioned about:sync-log in this issue because you mentioned you had sync connected when this problem occurred.

Comment 10

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:bdeankawamura, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 11

[wayne]

A very important parent Bookmark folder disappeared again!

When I do a Search, I can find Bookmarks that are in the Parent Bookmarks folder but as I have reported before, the HUGE issue is that there is NO way to find where the parent Bookmarks folder or the Bookmarks in the parent Bookmarks folder using the Search function! How can I find the parent Bookmarks folder and where the Bookmarks are that were in the Parent Bookmarks folder?

I have added many Bookmarks since yesterday so I do not want to try to do a Restore.

I need to find the Bookmarks that disappeared soon.

Comment 12

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

Sorry this has happened again. Note that in comment 7 and comment 9 we offered some steps which might help us get towards understanding what is going on here.

Comment 13

[wayne]

Attachment: _C__Users_Wayne2_AppData_Roaming_Mozilla_Firefox_Profiles_nlvapld0.default-1597107264656_weave_logs_error-sync-1643140319589.txt.pdf

This is the error-sync file that was created yesterday, the same day that I noticed a parent Bookmark disappeared which I found later after contact Support as a result of using the new option of right-clicking a bookmarks search result and click "Show in Folder" in Firefox 96.

Comment 14

[wayne]

Sync was not enabled at the time the issue occurred. I found the parent Bookmark way off in another parent folder,as I recall which is very strange and I was able to find the misplaced parent Bookmark and put it back where it was before using your new option of right-clicking a bookmarks search result and click "Show in Folder" in Firefox 96. This is a VERY helpful feature.

Comment 15

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

Thanks for that info - the log you attached shows a transient network error connecting to the sync servers which is almost certainly unrelated to this problem.

however, I'm a little confused about whether Sync was enabled or not. In comment 13 that log that shows Sync was connected on the same day that you had the problem, but comment 14 says Sync was not enabled at the time. Can you please clarify?

Comment 16

[wayne]

When I right click on the hamburger menu, and click on the gadget to the right of my name, one option says, "Sync now" so I got the impression that Sync was off but that was incorrect---it is on but just not active. Actually, after learning more about the Syncing feature, I would like to suggest that the interface be made more clear to show that Syncing was on, on the hamburger menu. Now I know that if my name is shown at the top of the listed items from the hamburger drop down menu, it means that Sync is on.

So yes, Sync was on when the Bookmark disappeared. Thank you for pointing this issue out concerning Sync. I normally don't do much of anything with this option.

Comment 17

[Lougenia Bailey]

:wayne are you still experiencing this issue?

Comment 18

[wayne]

Yes, I do at times. Luckily, with the new Bookmark Search feature, finding the disappearing Bookmarks is much easier.