Bookmarks are both my bread and butter and also the bane of my existence. Honestly, I began collecting them in the mid 90's and still have the same file, although a steadily added-to version of it.
In the early days I backed up the file to a CD and later an external hard drive. Then Xmarks came along to save me. Now Xmarks-like ability is built right into browsers like Chrome and Firefox.
However there are two big problems with my growing 15 year old collection -- it contains duplicates and it is rife with broken links. Today I want to look at a way to solve the former and in the future we will tackle the latter.
A Firefox plugin called "Bookmark Duplicate Cleaner" is the tool I decided to use for this task. Once installed, it is accessible by clicking on the Tools menu and then Bookmark Duplicate Cleaner.
The app will immediately pop up a box that displays two columns. The left shows the duplicates that have been found and clicking one will display where it is duplicated within the right column. The bottom gives you an option to open the bookmark if you care to double-check it. However, the Delete button is probably what you will want to use in the vast majority of occasions.
The extension is very simple to use, but if you have a lot of duplicates found then you may expect to spend some time here. However, if your bookmark file has become as unwieldy as mine then apps and extensions are pretty much the only way to solve this problem.
If you are looking for a Chrome solution then you may want to check out SuperSorter which can do a similar thing. As for Bookmark Duplicate Cleaner, it is new -- version 0.1 -- but it holds some promise and will likely provides quite a bit more functionality in the future. For now, though, I still found it useful in cleaning up some of my multitude of bookmark problems.
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Thanks for the info Alan. I have been using Xmarks for some time to keep all my bookmarks synchronized. I ran into some problems when using it with different browsers though. When I was trying out Chrome, Xmarks would repeated duplicate my entire bookmarks collection. In Chrome it would create a new folder called "Imported from Firefox" that had my full collection. Then when I would open FF again, Xmarks would sync that new folder, which doubled my collection. This process would repeat each time I used Chrome and resulted in my bookmarks being duplicated, even nested, many times over. I have many thousands now and they are not arranged in any sort of neat and orderly fashion. Cleaning them up is a project I don't relish.
I tried the duplicate cleaner in Xmarks, but it was too aggressive in some cases and left many duplicates in others. It was more work than it was worth. I'll give this one a try and see if it does any better. Thanks.
This looks good as a duplicate detector/deleter.
But to check the current viability of bookmarks without manually opening any, I've been running a standalone called AM-DeadLink every year or so.
See http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm
It's not too difficult, it's freeware, and it works with the bookmarks in a variety of browsers - IE, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. It's for Windows 7/8 (32/64 bit), Vista, XP, 2000.
Maybe I will use both; AM-DeadLink doesn't facilitate deletion of a bookmark from within the software.
Oops. I see now that the duplicate finder button in AM-DeadLink does work. (The delete button is greyed out.)
I think Deadlink can't delete Firefox bookmarks due to the way they are stored.
@PixelWizard
how The delete button is greyed out?
i can not use delete buttonit say AM-DeadLink can only check url for dead link ,its not possible to edit or delete url in AM-DeadLink
I definitely need this. Thank you!
Martin, I like the new .content-box-blue here, but your comments aren't highlighted.
I prefer it when they are. :)
They are only highlighted if I'm the author.
re:Ken Saunders comments
Well Martin, if you did not author the 2 replies above, who did? Those replies are not highlighted.
I authored the comments but not the article ;)
"By Alan Buckingham on January 21, 2013 "
Sorry guys. :)