Bookmarks not working - quick fix (specific)

HerrVoid

[Potential] Quick dirty fix for the URL-Bar Bookmark Button/CTRL+D not working on press to create new Bookmark

[I create this post for people who have the same problem like I did who did not find any solution prior. As I roamed the forum, reddit and google for quite long and did not find an answer, let me know if I'm wrong and someone already posted the same solution to this problem.]

When I tried exporting settings from my main workstation (those located in appdata) to my laptop, as I wanted to skip the time invested in configuring visual aesthetics a second time, I stumbled into a problem, where I was not able to create new bookmarks from the button at the end of the url-bar or by utilizing keyboard-shortcuts. Rightclick wouldn't work either; the only solution left was to manually set bookmarks through vivaldi://bookmarks/.

After roaming the web, I had found several vain solutions like exporting bookmarks, deleting everything and re-importing or fiddling with configs, in the end, none of those worked. So I decided to share my own quick solution if anyone feels helpless and does not want to reinstall the browser.

This problem seemed to occur in several cases marked by distinct causes, yet, here is one method you may try before re-installing, and it does not require long-term-fiddling and lets you keep existing bookmarks if you moved your userdata.

️ Definition

The Bookmark-Button or Bookmarking-Shortcut won't work and there is no quick way to create bookmarks.

This expresses as a Bookmarking-Mini-Window not opening when Bookmarking is triggered and new bookmarks unable to be created or found in the list after triggering a Bookmarking-Action.

️ Cause

In our case, the cause is at least similar to a known bug that can be triggered without fiddling by deleting a folder being the last used to bookmark webpages known to the browser completely. This has been issued multiple times. Quote:

@Pathduck ; BUG: Bookmarks not Bookmarking. (SOLVED):
@rdreammaker It's a known bug, that for some reason is not fixed even though it's one of the more common reports users make.

It happens when the last used folder used for saving bookmarks is deleted, it still wants to save in that folder even if it no longer exists. If the folder is still in Deleted the bookmarks will just end up there, and the dialog will be broken.
[...]

A similar concept applies to moving vivaldi settings from a computer with certain bookmarks and folders last used to another one without also copying bookmarks and folders. [This is important, as we might want to unify the looks on several machines or userprofiles already used and customized]

️ This may help

If your bookmarks are empty, create some folders you can cycle through. If you have bookmarks, you probably already have more than one folder.
Go to vivaldi://bookmarks/ and manually add any arbitrary website as a bookmark to any folder. Then navigate to that specific page in a new tab.
From there, click on the bookmarks-symbol to edit the existing bookmark in the now appearing graphical mini-window.
Move the existing bookmark to different folders and click done.
Move the existing bookmark back to a folder you want to keep.

Now try adding any website as used to and bookmarking should work again [Note, that this was just my solution].
You may now delete your arbitrary auxiliary folders and bookmarks if you made use of such, yet make sure to keep the folder you last moved the bookmark to.

Some of the people fix this issue by accident when reordering their bookmark folder structure. If you did not find that fix by yourself - this is for you.

As noted, this worked for me after bookmarks broke when I moved my browser settings from my workstation to my laptop.

For backupping your data and reference to Vivaldi's file-folder-structure, this Vivaldi-Help-Page link may help.
A comprehensive Guide for moving to another device can be found here.

Feel free to answer, whether this solution helped you even with the cause being different.

Hope I could help maybe (°ヮ°)

luetage

Anything covered by sync, or data which can be exported and imported native, shouldn’t be copied over manually. You’re only asking for trouble. This includes bookmarks of course.

HerrVoid

@luetage Indeed.
But I did not yet mention the paranoid "refusing to create an account for sync or any other account on the internet because the whole internet is evil"-userbase-niche. I guess there is people who find use for manual syncing. Be it admins where - coincidentally - Vivaldi is a browser of their choice and they do not allow personal logins.

It is intended, if one is looking for a quick non-time-consuming fix without rebuilding their whole browser. You mustn't move stuff manually, that's fine, but I thought in any case a fix should be here.

Pathduck

@HerrVoid Hi - workarounds for known bugs are always good, but I'm struggling to understand the issue you're having.

The old issue you refer to where bookmarks were saved in trashed folders is fixed since a long time - if the last used folder is deleted, it will fall back to using the root of the bookmarks tree. I just tested in 6.2 Stable, and it still works.

There might be a new issue here with the bookmarks dialog, and if so it's important to understand what causes it. If you can reproduce the issue starting with a clean profile (not copying files over) there might be a real bug to be reported.

Make sure you also perform the full troubleshooting steps when you encounter issues:
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/troubleshoot/troubleshooting-issues/

Generally speaking, just blindly copying full profiles over between installs is not a recommended way to do things, and might lead to issues like you're seeing.

HerrVoid

@Pathduck Sync does not synchronize all browser settings, so I moved the settings file. The browser is heavily configured and such repetitve time expenditure can be skipped if one wants an array of machines or accounts to have the exact same settings, especially visually, by just transferring the settings files. Moving the browser settings broke the bookmarks in my case tho. And I cannot be the only one who has done this. So - as it is very specific - considering it a bug probably is rather not useful but for those few who do the same as I and encounter the same issue there is a solution here now.

To be accurate; The profile was not copied and sync was used normally first, only then Preferences and mpognobbkildjkofajifpdfhcoklimli were moved to the new machine to replace the settings there and skip adjusting the sidebar.