Sort your Firefox Bookmarks
Firefox just appends a new bookmark at the end of the folder that you have selected to save the bookmark into unless you drag and drop the new bookmark to another location. This makes it rather difficult to find particular bookmarks because you have to remember when you added the bookmark as well if you save a lot of bookmarks to that particular folder.
There is however a way to sort bookmarks in Firefox alphanumerically which can improve things a lot. You get the option to sort the bookmarks in ascending or descending order as well here.
It is also necessary to differentiate between the Bookmarks Manager, the bookmarks display in the sidebar, and the bookmarks menu that opens up when you click on the button in the Firefox interface.Sorting the bookmarks in the Bookmarks Manager has no effect on the display of the bookmarks in the sidebar and the bookmarks menu.
To simply sort the bookmarks in the sidebar and menu you right-click a bookmark and select sort by name. This sorts those bookmarks alphanumerically. Please note that all other folders remain unsorted unless you perform the operation there as well.
If you want to change the sorting order of bookmarks in the bookmarks manager, do the following:
- Click on Views while the bookmarks manager is open.
- Select the Sort context menu option and here one of the available bookmarking sort options: unsorted, sort by name, tags, location, most recent visit, visit count, keywords, description, added, last modified, A-Z order, Z-A order
Note: The option below is no longer provided in recent versions of Firefox. You need to use the "Views" menu to sort bookmarks according to your preferences.
If you prefer to have an ascending list of bookmarks instead on the sidebar you have to change that option in the configuration. (I'm not sure why this option is not working on the bookmarks menu as well)
- Open about:config in the address bar.
- Confirm that you will be careful if you receive a warning notification.
- Search for the filter "browser.bookmarks.sort.direction".
- The string has a default value of descending which simply means that they are added at the end of the list. Natural would mean a natural order while ascending would have the reverse result.
The sorting preference is no longer supported in newer versions of the Firefox web browser. The sorting options in the bookmarks manager don't seem to be saved across sessions as well.
What seems to stick are the manual sorting options that Firefox makes available. You can drag and drop any bookmark or folder to a new location from where it will be accessible then.
I understand how to use the Library screen to sort and otherwise organize the folders BUT there is another folder at the bottom which is called Unsorted Bookmarks and I can’t seem to get the contents to display in the RH box as I can with other folders.
I’ve read lots of articles and posts which give various instructions on how to do this but none work for me. Has anyone got a method for getting the contents of the Unsorted Bookmarks folder to display in the RH box?
Ahh, look at this, exactly what I needed. Full customization of bookmark sorting: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_Tips_:_Sorting_Bookmarks_Alphabetically#Using_an_extension_to_sort_bookmarks_recursively
Why Mozilla has not made this sort recursive is beyond me. Who wants to do this for a ton of folders?
Found this out myself- open bookmarks, right click on organise bookmarks, sort by name is there- click it- job done!
I agree with Me (above). Firefox’s bookmarks are a mess. I NEED to have them simple to sort by just clicking Bookmarks in the menu bar, and doing a right-click and sort. The way you now have to manually drag them to where you want them in Bookmarks menu, is just plain stupid.
Firefox 3’s bookmarks are a total disaster! They do not sort properly and the method to use for sorting is totally counter-intuitive. They need to redesign the whole bookmark organizer, as it is now it sucks.
Hey thanks for that tip.
My firefox bookmarks list is so crowded that I switched to google bookmarks.