# Importing Firefox bookmarks from an external drive **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 26, 2025, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/importing-firefox-bookmarks-from-an-external-drive/1022500 "2025-08-26T18:45:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2025, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/importing-firefox-bookmarks-from-an-external-drive/1022500/1 "2025-08-26T18:45:27Z")
I would like to import my Firefox bookmarks from my old hard drive. I have the drive in an external enclosure and it shows up as drive E. I found the bookmark backups in my old profile but they are JZOLN4 files and importing that type of file is not an option on the new Firefox installation on drive C. And I cannot run the old Firefox on drive E to export them as HTML. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2025, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/importing-firefox-bookmarks-from-an-external-drive/1022500/2 "2025-08-26T19:36:36Z")
Don’t know if you’ve searched Mozilla support, but I found this: > **[Recovering my bookmarks from an OLD hard drive to move to a new PC | Firefox...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/971302)** ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2025, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/importing-firefox-bookmarks-from-an-external-drive/1022500/3 "2025-08-26T19:54:17Z")
Copy the JZLON4 file to your new hard drive and then make another copy and change the file extension to JSON. I’m thinking that’s a corrupt file name. Possibly a corrupt file but you never know. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2025, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/importing-firefox-bookmarks-from-an-external-drive/1022500/4 "2025-08-26T19:54:59Z")
Um, are you sure they are “JZOLN4” files and not something like “JSON5”? Are your bookmarks private? If not, and you’re willing to trust a random Doper… you can DM the files to me and I can try to convert them into modern Firefox for you. Or you can try to ask a AI chatbot to help you with that if you can open the old files in a text editor and copy and paste the contents into the chatbot. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2025, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/importing-firefox-bookmarks-from-an-external-drive/1022500/5 "2025-08-26T22:31:16Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Um, are you sure they are “JZOLN4” files and not something like “JSON5”? Or maybe .jsonlz4. JavaScript Object Notation compressed with LZ4. Modern Firefox should handle that format or just plan .json. If not you can convert to HTML. ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/importing-firefox-bookmarks-from-an-external-drive/1022500/6 "2025-08-27T01:29:31Z")
I got it! Those odd named files are to restore bookmarks, not import them. So I did a restore on the new installation and it worked fine. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2025, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/importing-firefox-bookmarks-from-an-external-drive/1022500/7 "2025-08-27T11:50:32Z")
Awesome!