Recovery of your dials, how are dials stored and how to make a backup
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don't panic! If you don't see your dials in the New tab page, first try to restart browser or whole PC. Things like power outage, browser update or drive issue can momentarily break your browser and simple restart usually fixes the problem.
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don't uninstall my addon unless you have exported your dials data to a file - uninstalling addon will delete ALL local data!
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if you are logged in your cloud account on my server, you can't loose your data - server data are regularly backed up so even if you overwrite your server backup, I can restore it if you contact me in time (backups are deleted after few weeks)
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using "Firefox Sync" or "Chrome Sync" can also save your dials even if you uninstall addon or loose your device!
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dials data (including thumbnails) can be backed up also manually - from Options page / "Import backup" tab
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dials data cannot be recovered directly from hard drive or backup of your Firefox / Chrome profile folder.
Why? Browsers uses complex databases to store all addons data (including thumbnails). There is no simple file with addon data which could be copied to a new installation. If you have a backup of a whole profile, restore the whole profile, that's the only way to get to your dials data.
Each device has a local backups which can be used to undo any recent change.
This is the best and easiest solution for most problems. You can access it from the dials page main menu:
Resetting Firefox is often recommended as a fix for various issues with Firefox. And usually it helps because it creates new Firefox profile and copies some essential data to it from your old profile. This however doesn't include addons data.
The good news is, after performing Firefox Reset, the old profile folder will be backed up to your desktop under name "Old Firefox Data".
You cannot directly restore your dials from this folder, but you start new Firefox instance using this profile.
Follow these steps:
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make a copy of the "Old Firefox Data" folder (copy it from desktop to any other location, so that you have a backup!)
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open your refreshed Firefox and go to "about:profiles" page
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click "Create new profile" button
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click "Next" and when it asks you to enter profile name, write "delete me" and then click "Choose Folder..." button and navigate to your desktop and inside the "Old Firefox Data" folder - inside it there should be your profile folder, select it.
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after finishing new profile creation, on the "about:profiles" page click "Launch profile in new browser" button - this should open your old not-refreshed Firefox.
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backup your dials data to a file - open Options page / Import backup tab and click "export also thumbnails" button (this will create full backup in your downloads folder)
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close Firefox and you should still have "about:profiles" page opened
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since creating new profile sets it as default, you need to remove it now - find a profile called "delete me" and press "Remove" button (it will ask you if you want to delete files, click "Don't delete files", just in case)
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now that you have a backup of your dials, simply import it the same way as you exported it (in Options page / Import backup tab).
Recovery from your Cloud server account
If you have a new device and you want to download a backup from the cloud, simply login to your cloud account.
If you have problems recovering your cloud dials, contact me to my support email.
All your data (including thumbnails) can be exported to a single file from the Options page / Import backup tab:
You can then use this file to import your data in any supported browser.
As mentioned before, it's best to restore whole Firefox / Chrome profile. That will restore all data.
To find current profile folder in Firefox, visit "about:profiles" page.