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Tabs that were open on laptop currently show "New Tab" but have no option to restore previous session. How can I regain access to information in tabs?

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How do I regain access to previous tabs that are now showing "New Tabs" with no address in bar. I tried to regain access with going into history and "Restore Previous session" But that option is greyed out. No option to select that. I currently have several tabs open with this issue. Trying to regain access without loosing information. I currently am using a Mac Book Pro. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

How do I regain access to previous tabs that are now showing "New Tabs" with no address in bar. I tried to regain access with going into history and "Restore Previous session" But that option is greyed out. No option to select that. I currently have several tabs open with this issue. Trying to regain access without loosing information. I currently am using a Mac Book Pro. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

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This may or may not be possible. Could you start by making a backup of your existing session history files? Here's how:

You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
  • (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
  • type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show in Finder" button. If Finder shows a single folder rather than a long list of folder and files, double-click into that folder.

Then scroll down and double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location such as your Desktop.

What files did you find?

The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:

Firefox 56+

  • recovery.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
  • recovery.baklz4: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
  • previous.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
  • upgrade.jsonlz4-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
  • various .js files from the Firefox 55 days

Older Firefox

  • recovery.js: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
  • recovery.bak: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
  • previous.js: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
  • upgrade.js-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update

Could you take a look at what you have and the date/time of the various files to see whether you think any of them would have the missing tabs?

To preview the contents of a file, you can drag and drop it onto this page, then click Scrounge URLs:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html

That tool is on my site, so please let me know if it doesn't work for you. You also can save the page of clickable links as a backup.