Since Firefox's automatic bookmark backups are named
bookmarks-yyyy-mm-dd.json and its manual backups are, by default, named in the same fashion, I'm not sure what would lead you to try to restore from
bookmarks.html. I sure hope you didn't take from my previous post any notion that I was suggesting such an approach!
Not you at all... One of the approaches Firefox offers is restoring from an html file, and since that was the only one around and it was "boookmarky" I tried it, and, as I said, it restored Firefox's default set of bookmarks. (I wonder why Firefox has got those [deleted by me] default bookmarks backed up, anyhow?) I forgot to say that it did not overwrite my current set...merely augmented it.
I was attempting to direct kevs to a Firefox support document, rather than to suggest taking action on the basis of "a wild guess," but it seemed clear to me from his reply that the problem is that since he "need[s] to keep the current set," as he "change[s] things all the time," he's not looking for a solution which requires overwriting the existing set of bookmarks with a previous set.
I therefore offered a workaround involving exporting, not backing up, to an html file—which Firefox names, by default, bookmarks.html—and bookmarking, not restoring from, that file.
In any case, were he to attempt to overwrite his current set with one of the automatic bookmarks-yyyy-mm-dd.json backups—or with any other file, if he selected Choose File... instead—he'd first be presented with a dialog stating This will replace all of your current bookmarks with the backup. Are you sure?
Thanks for clarifying your approach; I didn't read it as he can add new bookmarks to his html file...or is that what you actually said? My suggestion...really an educated guess rather than a wild one, is for kevs to move his current bookmarks to his Desktop and go through the backups one-at-a-time (assuming, of course that he's got multiples), extract whatever he needs from each, and, finally, get them into the Desktop file in the usual manner.
Edit: I wonder what induces Firefox to generate those backups? If it does so every time it quits after a change has been made, for instance,
"bookmarkbackups" could get awful large, maybe even relatively quickly.
