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Started

Lost all hibernated tabs and folders. Exported backup data not restoring any of them.

G. Strout 11 years ago updated by god 5 years ago 24

First of all, I love your plugin! It has literally changed the way I work! I now normally operate with 1000+ tabs hibernated and organized into folders so I can immediately jump right back in to a project where I left off (I am managing a lot of projects) without needing to keep any of those tabs active until then. Which causes the problem: About a week ago I lost all my hibernated tabs and folders on what I guess was a 'faulty' shutdown. 


That was a LOT of work to lose. I was bummed. Thankfully I had made some exported data backups just to be safe. But now whenever I try to restore from any of the exported backups, it seems to restore back to the most recent 'Last Session' which only has about 20-30 tabs open. 


USING CHROME BOOKMARKS TO STORE SIDEWISE TAB DATA?

I was thinking that maybe my use-case was not typical so I might be hitting otherwise unseen problems but it seemed like it might be worth tackling. I was wondering whether you could maybe use Chrome's own native Bookmark system to provide the Sidewise hibernated tab backups. It would seem that this would likely already have the 'Save Data on Close' issue resolved and it might provide the added benefit of syncing the tab's between different machines. 


Answer

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Answer
Started

Sorry this happened to you. I'm still trying to figure out why this (rarely) happens, and have a couple solutions in the works which are likely to fix this (and improve performance besides). Thanks for the report; I'll update you when I have something more definitive.

I just tried using an even older backup data set and got this error: 

"There was a problem importing the data. No changes have been made. 

Unexpected end of input"

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Answer
Started

Sorry this happened to you. I'm still trying to figure out why this (rarely) happens, and have a couple solutions in the works which are likely to fix this (and improve performance besides). Thanks for the report; I'll update you when I have something more definitive.

I too like this user use a lot of organized hibernated folders. But it seems after reaching a certain amount that when I close Chrome, it just reverts back to an old backup or something, losing a lot of my recent hibernated tabs.

I need to restart my PC now, and thus close Chrome (I usually always leave it open and then put the PC to sleep), and I'm trying to Export sidewise in case it screws up after exiting, and the export button isn't doing anything.

And... there we go... Lost a bunch of tabs again. =/

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My apologies again. Fixing this issue is #1 on my todo list and I have figured out a way to fix the problem that will be relatively fast to implement.

Fk it. I'm uninstalling.
Fast being over a year?
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The bug is due to the size limit of the the Chrome file API that you're using. Once it gets past a certain limit, it'll just clip, causing the XML to become corrupt and lose tabs.
You're welcome.

Actually, it simply prevents my from exporting at all, due to a JavaScript error. I can try to post it later., but I think it has to do with a localStorage limitation like you said.
https://developer.chrome.com/apps/offline_storage - Local limited to 5MB? I thought I remembered a number like 400,000 (Kbs/Bs). The filesystem API seems to allow it the 'query' for more storage, if needed, but Sidewise does not support this.


I wish it would at least allow you to copy the backup data that includes what it saves to localStorage so we can import it later.

Just use Tabs Outliner. It's pretty much nearly the same. I've switched to that about a year ago and haven't lost a SINGLE tab. It also makes backups that are REALLY easy to pick and restore which tabs you lost.

Another thing that happens is that if I try to hibernated all tabs in a window, it only hibernates the first one.

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I believe this is fixed with today's release.

I lost all my sidewise tabs (500+). I did save them 3 months ago. How do I recover them? I pasted the file into the sidewise "import" box but all this code is pasted then nothing happens. Please help !
You don't. You suck it up and use Tabs Outliner instead of this extension which will never be fixed. I've switched 7 months ago and I haven't lost a single tab since, and my PC has crashed a few times.
There must be an easy way to restore the 500+ pages since I did save them using Sidewise save and I can see the data is there.
See my response above:
"The bug is due to the size limit of the the Chrome file API that you're using. Once it gets past a certain limit, it'll just clip, causing the XML to become corrupt and lose tabs."
So yes, your data is there, but not all of it. The file ends 'abruptly', and this is why Sidewise can't load it. It's corrupt. Your only option is to just extract the links in the file one by one, on fix the file manually. I suggest the former.
Look at the end of your file. If it doesn't end with /* End Sidewise Data */, then your file is corrupt.
The saved tabs file ends exactly with "End Sidewise Data" so it must not be corrupt. I was able to recover all these pages before, but I "lucked" into the recovery, and am not sure how I did it the first time. If you can help, hugely appreciated !
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You could try resetting Sidewise altogether and then import it (although that could risk losing your current set of tabs as well). I don't know how I used to do it. Sometimes the emergency restore worked, sometimes it didn't. The import certainly is quite a bit buggy though. In any case, you will eventualy run into the limit I described above, and then any tabs you create after it will be lost.
How do I import the data? I tried pasting all of it into the box that appears when you click "import" but it just creates an additional tab with all the data.
That seems to be about right. I don't have it enabled anymore. I just tried to enable it but it doesn't even pop up. So yea... I couldn't tell you other than from memory, that seems to be what I did. Just click Import data, and paste into the box where it says to put it.

If Sidewise is not appearing, maybe try clicking the light bulb icon in Chromes tab bar. I do this sometimes to 'refresh' the data Sidewise contains, but be careful with doing that. I try to export before 'refreshing' because it sometimes loses recent page data that way.

I also just lost all my tabs! I did not have an export anywhere. I have been using Windows 10 File History. But it looks like File History does NOT save the AppData folder!


However, I do have a recent system image of my entire laptop. Surely the SideWise data is there. Can you tell me where I would find the sidewise tabs data store? I would like to avoid restoring my entire laptop just to get at those stored tabs. Is there a way?

Hi children,

The settings are stored here:

C:\Users\god\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Local Extension Settings\biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo

All you have to do is back that folder up and its contents or restore it.