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All my history was deleted

  • 1 reply
  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

FirefoxNoobUser
FirefoxNoobUser
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I was surfing in some "weird" websites for a short time. I then used the "Clear recent history" function with the "Last Hour" option in the time range.

I have a lot of tabs in the browser that I keep on there for watch later. After using the function for deleting the history, ALL the history which can be accesed by using the "Go back one page" button (big arrow in the left) was deleted in ALL tabs. Even tabs that I'd not opened in days.

I'm not sure about this, but guess this is not the way it should work. Any chance of recovering my old history information?

I was surfing in some "weird" websites for a short time. I then used the "Clear recent history" function with the "Last Hour" option in the time range. I have a lot of tabs in the browser that I keep on there for watch later. After using the function for deleting the history, ALL the history which can be accesed by using the "Go back one page" button (big arrow in the left) was deleted in ALL tabs. Even tabs that I'd not opened in days. I'm not sure about this, but guess this is not the way it should work. Any chance of recovering my old history information?

All Replies (1)

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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You used "Clear Recent History" and didn't click the Forget button?

This is because the Forget button closes the current window and opens a new window after having deleted your data. 

Proceeding will:
Close all Tabs and Windows
Delete Recent Cookies
Delete Recent History
Open a new clean Window

If you use "Clear Recent History" (Shift+Ctrl+Delete) then you shouldn't lose open tabs. This is unless you would clear the browsing history when you close Firefox.

You can check in Windows Explorer if there is a previous version of the sessionstore.js file available.

You can also check the sessionstore-backups folder.

Firefox uses sessionstore.js in the profile folder to store session data. Sessionstore.js is only present when Firefox is closed. The sessionstore.js file is created from recovery.js when you close Firefox and is removed and copied to previous.js when you start Firefox to make is possible to restore the session at any time.

Backup the session files in the sessionstore-backups folder in the Firefox Profile Folder to make sure not to lose possible important session data. Do NOT close Firefox when Firefox is already running.

You will normally find these files in the sessionstore-backups folder: 

previous.js (cleanBackup: copy of sessionstore.js from previous session that was loaded successfully)
recovery.js (latest version of the sessionstore written during runtime)
recovery.bak (previous version of the sessionstore written during runtime)
upgrade.js-<build_id> (backup created during an upgrade of Firefox)

You can copy a file from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main profile and rename the file to sessionstore.js to replace the current file (make a backup copy of the current sessionstore.js).

See also: