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how to recover previous sessions

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Despite that I have chosen to restore the previous session on startup, sometimes I find Firefox to startup after being closed regularly before with all the tabs of the previous session gone an w/o the "well, this is embarrassing..." window. In that case I always have to open the history and try to remember and find the respective tabs and open them one by one.

I saw that there is a 'sessionstore.js' and a 'sessionstor.bak' in the folder 'C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles' which I believe contain the actual (*.js) and previous (*.bak) sessions but how can I manually restore i.e. the *.bak after I experienced firefox to come back w/o the previous session tabs?

Furthermore, I'd like to create a session profile with some specific tabs and store it somewhere. How to do such a thing and how to open such a session profile.

Despite that I have chosen to restore the previous session on startup, sometimes I find Firefox to startup after being closed regularly before with all the tabs of the previous session gone an w/o the "well, this is embarrassing..." window. In that case I always have to open the history and try to remember and find the respective tabs and open them one by one. I saw that there is a 'sessionstore.js' and a 'sessionstor.bak' in the folder 'C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles' which I believe contain the actual (*.js) and previous (*.bak) sessions but how can I manually restore i.e. the *.bak after I experienced firefox to come back w/o the previous session tabs? Furthermore, I'd like to create a session profile with some specific tabs and store it somewhere. How to do such a thing and how to open such a session profile.

All Replies (6)

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For the first part of your question, you should not have to go in and restore individual tabs after restoring previous history. Instead after restoring previous history, you can open previous windows by their active tab which is a bit difficult, OR you can restore all of the windows at the bottom of where you have the choice to open individual windows.

Perhaps part of the problem is that apparently Mozilla has information that most people use the home page supplied by Firefox. I don't know anyone who does that myself. But it might help to restore some of the old behavior so when when Firefox ends you are asked what you want to do regardless of what you reply, you can still get the previous session from the History menu. see item #31 (#tabslost)

You can make Firefox Firefox 5.0 look like Firefox 3.6.18, see numbered items 1-10 in the following topic Fix Firefox 4.0 toolbar user interface, problems (Make Firefox 5.0, or 4.0.1, look like 3.6). Whether or not you make changes, you should be aware of what has changed and what you have to do to use changed or missing features.

Modified by David McRitchie

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actually, I didn't understand a word of what you said.

question is: is there a file where Firefox stores the actual session at the moment it crashes or when I close Firefox? if yes, what is the name of such file and where can I find it? and if there is such a file and I know its name and location, what do I have to do to restore the sessions therein?

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You can use "History > Restore Previous Session" to get the previous session at any time.
You may need to click the orange/gray Firefox button to see History.
There is also a "Restore Previous Session" button on the default about:home Home page.

If that choice is not available (grayed) and you also can't reopen closed windows then that session is lost.

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still not the answer to my question.

question is: Where does Firefox store the tabs that were open in the current session upon exit?

by the way, how can I open the about:blank page? Seems that this page opens randomly but not upon typing about:blank in the address bar

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Firefox 4 copies the current file sessionstore.js (if present) to sessionstore.bak at the start of the session to make it possible to reopen that last session at any time.

You can only restore the last session.
To reopen more sessions you need a session restore extension.

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thank you very much, this is what I was looking for...