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firefox has wiped my history - i need to get it back - how please?

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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switched on the pc this morning and there is no history apart from yesterday. All history was showing last night. I need to retrieve the history for the past month. Is there anyway I can do this?

switched on the pc this morning and there is no history apart from yesterday. All history was showing last night. I need to retrieve the history for the past month. Is there anyway I can do this?

All Replies (2)

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HI lindamay,

Unfortunately there is no guaranteed or easy way to do this in Firefox. History is stored in the file in the Profile folder called places.sqlite.

The add on SQLite Manager allows you to open up this file and manage the tables that store the History and Bookmarks of Firefox.

In order to prevent this from happening, please check the preference in Firefox > Options/Preferences > Privacy > History However the cache will get no higher than the default size.

For more information on history:

Or if there is an old profile that has the old history:

HOWEVER, there are third party software providers that do file restoration. Or if you have a computer back up of the day before recovering the place.sqlite file from that back up could also prove as a recovery.

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Sounds that the history got deleted somehow.

In case you are using "Clear history when Firefox closes":

  • do not clear the Browsing History

Note that clearing "Site Preferences" clears all exceptions for cookies, images, pop-up windows, software installation, passwords, and other website specific data.

Also make sure that you do not have cleanup or security software that removes the history.


Try to restore a previous version of the places.sqlite file.

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox profile folder if the problem returns.