Is it possible to restore deleted group?

[ann.en...@gmail.com]

After I placed a few open tabs to my saved (not open) group categories I had to click green "safe close" to save them for later. I did it for two groups very close to each other, and then accidentally deleted third closed group from tree, cause its purple trashbin button was on the same level as "safe close" buttons. Is it possible to restore this group? Some of the data was really important. Maybe there is some backups of the tree for last hours/days somewhere?

[Vladyslav Volovyk]

Tabs Outliner create internally (in Chrome profile) several backups of the user tree. They automatically used in case of any problems with main storage (and they happens) but they can also be restored manually. Yet the procedure is not super user friendly.

I record a short screen-cast to illustrate it.

First, dont forget to manually backup your tree using Ctrl-S to HTML file, you then will be needed this file to restore recent nodes.

Then, use developers console to restore some backup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpxsxi99CmU&feature...;

In this screencast i first activate a Developers mode in Extensions page, to be able to open Tabs outliner console.

In console you will see a list of files that contain backups of your tree.

Files have 2 numbers in own name, first one is the creation time, in miliseconds, since the 1970.1.1, second one is the number of nodes stored in the file.

to restore any of these backups you need to write in console next command:

localStorage['serviceOptions_restoreSource'] = 'copy-there-backup-file-name.json'

In screen-cast i copy this line from another window, using the clipboard, and insert in TO console, then i select and copy the filename from console and insert it in between quotes.

To force TO for utilizing the selected backup file it must be restarted. So i restart it by disabling and then immediately enabling it.

The procedure is shown in screencast, i first restore some very old backup with just 5 nodes, and then restore some other.

After that you need to use previously saved in HTML tree to restore the data you have in most recent version of the tree. As the backup will not contain it. Or you can save your older tree, restored from backup, in HTML, then restore some recent backup and then import from HTML deleted nodes back to tree.

This screencast shows how to save tree as HTML and then import some hierarchies back from this HTML file:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2ckhBNZYhw&feature...;

Hope this will help. 

Next version will have much more simple process for all of this, and also a way to see the version of the tree in any previous point of time. But for now this is the only option available.

Best regards.

[dav...@gmail.com]

Thank you for this. Exactly what I needed! Lost a 60 tab window when opening and trying to rename it at the same time. I think it was a mistaken mouse click that trashed it.

Thanks again.

[0mal...@gmail.com]

When are backups of the user tree created? Is there a method to create one?

[Mark Kuryan]

This should really be highlighted somehow, even from withing extension itself, as in case of a current session becoming corrupted and the extension failing to restore backup this method to load the backup manually is very important to have.

[boor...@gmail.com]

IT IS VERY EASY TO RESTORE FROM BACKUP.
Once I figured out how to do it, it took me 30 secs.
- Open up TO on new computer
- Open up Options (gear icon)
- Click Backup tab
- - At this point you should see a list of all your old backups from other computers or before corruption
- - You should see a Delete, or View button next to each backup
- Click the View button next to the one you want to restore
- - This will open a new TO window
- Put Current TO window next to old backup TO window
- Drag old hierarchy and drop on Current TO window
- - Your old heirarchy, should now be there with your new one.
- DONE

As long as your are backing up correctly, this should work for you if you have corrupted database, or a new computer, or anything else.

I was very worried after reading all these comments, but then I found this very small comment by Vlad, IT SOLVES EVERYTHING, just is sparse in detail. I added detail above.

"Also worth note that there is really easy way to backup and transfer your data:

Just expand all nodes, save the view through Ctrl-S and you will be able to drag hierarchies from this file to some other Tabs Outliner instance, or just use this file on its own. "

[timb...@gmail.com]

The instructions for restoring from backup should include a step for first deleting the existing tree in Current TO window, otherwise, you'll just keep creating duplicates.

Many would like to see the "Backup" feature be a "Sync" feature, to eliminate all this hassle (yes, it's "easy", but when it's something that takes several minutes to do, and you have to do it multiple times every day of your life, it's worth automating).

I see little value to maintaining so many Backups, since Google Chrome has all this history saved for us already. What we really need IMO is to automate the restoring from a single Google Drive backup, to eliminate the need for a human to ever spend time restoring. This: https://tabsoutliner.userecho.com/communities/1/topics/134-sync-tabs-tree

[Eric]

Does this method still work? Or does it only work in Pro version? My database had a corruption error yesterday and I am looking for backup jsons as shown in the video. I don't see any in the console.