I have lots of bookmarks, not only in Firefox but also in Internet Explorer and Opera. It happens sometimes when I want to open a bookmark that I have not used for a while that the link points to a dead url which makes me search for mirrors or cached versions of the page. Ultimately I remove the link from the favorites because it is dead and most likely will not be revived at a later date.
Would not it be great if there was a tool that checked the bookmarks automatically for dead links and duplicate entries ? A tool that would be able to read and check bookmarks in many browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Mozilla ? I assume you answered the above questions with yes, if that is the case AM-Deadlink might be the exact program you would like to take a look at.
Am-Deadlink is freeware, just download and install it on your computer. You have a drop down menu on the upper left corner when you start the program where you chose the browser you want to check. You sometimes have to navigate to the bookmarks folder of that browser manually and select it, but that should not be a big deal.
Now you can check the appearing bookmarks and find duplicates. If the link is dead a 404 error most likely appears in the line of the bookmark. You can now delete that bookmark if you like or leave it there and check later again. Those errors also appear when a website moves host and that process has not finished yet for example. It is always a good idea to check it more often before you delete an entry.
AM-Deadlink has the ability to backup the bookmarks as a zip file, there is unfortunatly no option to import bookmarks from one browser to the other directly. You may export bookmarks in a universal format and import them later through your browser though.
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I have a ton of bookmarks too, and it’s nearly impossible to monitor them manually. This AM-Deadlink tool sounds like just the thing I need, so thanks for the tip!!
The problem with AM-Deadlink is that it will not allow you to remove both duplicates manually (even if you KNOW what you’re doing!), will not let you rename bookmark, and worst of all: it WILL delete both copies of a duplicated bookmark – just if you change sorting options. It DID happen to me with latest v3.2 version.
What is really sad – it still is the best solution, because there are no alternatives. You just have to be really careful with it. :(
I am using a LinkCollector for check links and search duplicates.
Website: http://www.vscsoftware.com