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I had several windows open and one window had tons of open tabs but the Restore Session feature is not highlighted and I can't get it to be enabled. Please help

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I've already tried using the Session History Scrounger and Profiles files but the only previous.js file contains one window with one tab.

I've already tried using the Session History Scrounger and Profiles files but the only previous.js file contains one window with one tab.

All Replies (9)

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Hi, it sounds like you know your way around. If have used Scrounger and looked in the other places then brace for it all is gone unless in the backup folder.

  • sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs (see also the sessionstore-backups folder)

fyi for the future :

You will possibly have to do a Refresh to get back that Session Manager Menu. If you do can search and see if can find a Session Manager. https://addons.mozilla.org/ if I do I get results for 57+ only.

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On the History menu, are there any windows listed under Recently Closed Windows?

Unfortunately, your Firefox hasn't updated for a while, so there's not going to be any fresh "update.js" file in sessionstore-backups.

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Many thanks--I can't find my previous session in the Old Firefox Data folder after refreshing. I am so lost. No, unfortunately the Recently Closed Windows didn't include them

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Hi RestoreHelp, there are only a handful of files to check, as you know from other threads:

  • sessionstore.js -- previous session history after Firefox closes normally
  • recovery.js, recovery.bak -- live session history (or if Firefox crashed, previous session history)
  • previous.js -- previous session history after Firefox starts up

If these were tabs that you had open for quite a while, do you think there might be a recent-ish Time Machine backup of any of those files?

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Many thanks but no Time Machine set up. Also, it's on Mac OS

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It does not sound like we will find your lost tabs. Do you still have History (e.g., "Show All History") to recover some of the links?

For future reference, Time Machine is a backup program in MacOS X, but I don't know whether 10.6 had it. (https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht201250)

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I have Time Machine but it's not set up.

What application opens the document “sessionstore.bak”?

Many thanks!

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The sessionstore.bak file is a JSON data file simlar to sessionstore.js. You can feed it to the Scrounger to view its contents. I would expect that it's from a few years ago (it stopped being generated back around Firefox 32).

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

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.