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Is it possible to edit bookmarks' URLs directly in large groups?

  • 3 replies
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  • Last reply by ISPOL

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I've got around a large amount of bookmarks whose links changed because the website it was on changed servers/domains. As it's a different URL than what's in Bookmarks, Firefox doesn't recognize it as the same page. As it happens, the identification for each page remains the same; I just need to change the beginnings of each URL-- for example, http://www.example.com/Lorem/Ipsum/ID34566 to https://pages.example.com/Lorem/Ipsum/ID34566.

Would it be possible to go to the file where the list of bookmarks is stored and then simply use a 'find all' and 'replace all' function, or some similar way of editing bookmarks en masse?

I've got around a large amount of bookmarks whose links changed because the website it was on changed servers/domains. As it's a different URL than what's in Bookmarks, Firefox doesn't recognize it as the same page. As it happens, the identification for each page remains the same; I just need to change the beginnings of each URL-- for example, http://www.example.com/Lorem/Ipsum/ID34566 to https://pages.example.com/Lorem/Ipsum/ID34566. Would it be possible to go to the file where the list of bookmarks is stored and then simply use a 'find all' and 'replace all' function, or some similar way of editing bookmarks en masse?

Chosen solution

I assume that ISPOL is talking about non-duplicate bookmarks, but rather many bookmarks for the same domain and for individual pages within that domain.

Firefox stores bookmarks (along with browsing and downloads history) in the places.sqlite file in the Profile folder. With Firefox closed, a user could edit that file using a Sqlite Manager - external program or a Firefox Add-on, but would need some knowledge of sqlite query commands and be able to recognize a bookmark from browsing history. But the last could be solved by clearing browsing history before starting to edit. http://www.sqlabs.com/sqlitemanager.php https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/sqlite-manager/


If I wanted to do that, I would export my Bookmarks in bookmarks.html format and save that file to my hard drive. Then I would open that file in a text or HTML editor and edit the URL's as needed - using "Find". Then I would save that file to be imported back into Firefox. But before importing back into Firefox, I would delete all existing bookmarks in Firefox. HTML files imported into Firefox bookmarks append existing bookmarks, not replace them like with the JSON backups.

And those two aforementioned add-ons would probably choke on a fully duplicated set of bookmarks, depending upon how many bookmarks you have.

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Chosen Solution

I assume that ISPOL is talking about non-duplicate bookmarks, but rather many bookmarks for the same domain and for individual pages within that domain.

Firefox stores bookmarks (along with browsing and downloads history) in the places.sqlite file in the Profile folder. With Firefox closed, a user could edit that file using a Sqlite Manager - external program or a Firefox Add-on, but would need some knowledge of sqlite query commands and be able to recognize a bookmark from browsing history. But the last could be solved by clearing browsing history before starting to edit. http://www.sqlabs.com/sqlitemanager.php https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/sqlite-manager/


If I wanted to do that, I would export my Bookmarks in bookmarks.html format and save that file to my hard drive. Then I would open that file in a text or HTML editor and edit the URL's as needed - using "Find". Then I would save that file to be imported back into Firefox. But before importing back into Firefox, I would delete all existing bookmarks in Firefox. HTML files imported into Firefox bookmarks append existing bookmarks, not replace them like with the JSON backups.

And those two aforementioned add-ons would probably choke on a fully duplicated set of bookmarks, depending upon how many bookmarks you have.

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I don't know much about SQL or sqlite, but simply editing a html file is a much easier task! Thanks!