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I lost my tabs! I have a folder on the desktop called "old firefox data" that showed up after I refreshed firefox. What do I do?

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PSJJ
PSJJ
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Facebook will not load for me so I was troubleshooting and one of the things I did was refresh Firefox. After that I lost all my tabs but there is a folder on my mac desktop that is titled "Old Firefox Data". I've read some of the other forum threads but am not a techie in the sense of coding, etc. I'm a software user so some of what I'm reading I'm not processing and am afraid to mess something up further. I need the tabs back if I can get them because of research that I was doing. Please help. Thanks.

Facebook will not load for me so I was troubleshooting and one of the things I did was refresh Firefox. After that I lost all my tabs but there is a folder on my mac desktop that is titled "Old Firefox Data". I've read some of the other forum threads but am not a techie in the sense of coding, etc. I'm a software user so some of what I'm reading I'm not processing and am afraid to mess something up further. I need the tabs back if I can get them because of research that I was doing. Please help. Thanks.

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jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Yes, there is a good chance you can get them back. I'm going to suggest opening two different folders in Finder, and looking for a variety of different files. Hopefully we can get all your previous windows and tabs back.

Part 1: Preparing your current profile folder

Please start by opening your current Firefox settings folder, also known as your profile folder, in Finder. Here's the easiest way, 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/Return

In the first table on the page, click the "Show in Finder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders, which are your current Firefox settings.

Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Quit out. Firefox should be completely closed.

In the Finder window, you should now find a file named sessionstore.js (not in the sessionstore-backups folder, but at that main level you started at). Can you find that file? If so, please rename it to sessionstore.old for possible future reference.

Part 2: Finding and restoring your previous session tabs

Leaving that window open, go ahead and open Old Firefox Data in a new Finder window. You should see one or more semi-randomly-named folder inside. Open the latest one, and look for a sessionstore.js file there.

If you find it: Copy it from that old settings folder and paste it into your current settings folder. Then start Firefox and see whether it worked.

If you do not find it: Double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder and look for a recovery.js file. If you find that, copy it from that old settings folder and paste it into your current settings folder. Rename it there to sessionstore.js so Firefox finds it. Then start Firefox and see whether it worked.

Any luck with these steps?

cor-el
cor-el
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Note that on Mac that you also might have a backup in the Time Machine.

If you use the Time Machine then try to restore file(s) from that backup.

See:

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder: