Where is Tabs Outliner store own data and how to restore from a backup or move the tree to a new PC.

[Vladyslav Volovyk]

It is store own data in:

Windows Vista, Windows 7 (Chrome Dev, Beta, Prod Channels):

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\IndexedDB\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb\

Windows Vista, Windows 7 (Chrome Canary Build): 

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome SxS\User Data\Default\IndexedDB\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb\

OSX:

/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/IndexedDB/chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb/

Ubuntu - Chrome:

/home/<username>/.config/google-chrome/Default/IndexedDB/chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb/

Ubuntu - Chromium:

/home/<username>/.config/chromium/Default/IndexedDB/chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb

Take note the /Default/ subfolder, if you have more then one Chrome profile and use it with TabsOutliner there will be different folder name. Typically Chrome name all the others profiles folders as: "Profile 1", "Profile 3", "Profile 9" .....

An easy way to know the correct path to the profile of the current Chrome window is to enter in its address-bar  next url:

chrome://version/

The path will be displayed in the "Profile path:" section

Or you can search for a "chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb" in a filesystem to find all the relevant folders in all the profiles.

I highly recommend backup every day this folder and keep several older versions! 

Use the standard system backup, or better install some of the backup or synchronize service to copy this folder in to the Cloud. For example SugarSync can backup any folder on a PC to a cloud, not only own default folder, and it is goes with a completely enough free plan to backup all the Tabs Outliner data.

You can also delete this folder if Tabs Outliner does not start for some reason - for example when database become corrupted after some bluescreen (of course you will lose all you data from tree in this case, this is why i recommend keep several older backups - that's not true anymore), by deleting files int TO IndexedDb folder you will actually force restoration of last good known saved data from the emergence backup (Tabs Outliner perform and maintain several backups of the main database using completely different technology), yet maintain several older backups of the IndexedDB folder is strongly advised anyway. As this is the main recommended way how you can restore you tree to other pc or after serious crash. 

UPDATE:

IndexedDB storage mentioned in this post continue to be a primary data storage. Yet in additional to it there is also file backups of data for 9 last days (every day a backup) and for 6 last hours (a backup for every hour). Unfortunately - not in Chrome 18 (default Ubunta browser) - please upgrade you Chromium to latest stable build!

There was several really strange incidents with data lost, mostly on unofficial Chrome builds - portable or from third parties (Co0lNova browser) and several incidents of database corruptions, and one reaffirmed incident when database was sometime stop work at all, until Chrome restart. So, to minimize data loss in future on such events (really rare, yet anyway) latest version not only make periodic automatic backups but also duplicate all data on every save in one additional place. If data from Database is corrupted or not look like the latest saved data the data from this emergency place will be utilized upon restart.

This might affect your ability to restore your tree using IndexedDB files backup - as the data from IndexedDB will be ignored (as they will not look like something that TO successfully saved last time), and instead data from emergency source will be utilized.

So to restore you tree from backup, or to move you data to an other PC you must first clear this emergency storage in a freshly installed version of the TO. The simplest way to do this is by uninstalling the Tabs Outliner from a PC where you plan to restore you tree. Note that you must uninstall the TO, not simple disable.

The procedure to transfer you tree (to a new PC for example, or to other profile on a same PC) is next:

0. Save the Tabs Outliner window on a PC where you plan to restore your tree to a html file (by Ctrl-S), if you already have some useful data in it.
1. Delete (uninstall) the Tabs Outliner from a target Chrome (use this link: chrome://chrome/extensions to open list of extensions)
Note that you must delete the Tabs Outliner by delete icon, not simple disable it, it is important!
2. You need to find this directory in you old backup (in the Chrome installation from which you plan to copy the data):
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\IndexedDB\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb\
(if you have only one Chrome profile)
3. And copy its content to a similar directory in the target Chrome. 
Basicaly you must copy the "chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb" subfolder to the 
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\IndexedDB\
on the target PC (or target profile, but in this case there will be not the "Default" name).
4. Install again Tabs Outliner from the Chrome Web Store - it will utilize the existed in profile database

[Vladyslav Volovyk]

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. 

[Vladyslav Volovyk]

I decide to provide some other algorithm to surely load TO database from other PC.

0) check the chrome://version/ page to find a path to your current Chrome profile (Profile Path field)

then intall the TO (if it's not installed already) and then completely shut down Chrome (on a Windows PC without this
you will not be able to delete some files that you will need to delete on next steps)

then:

1) Delete all next files and folders from the current Chrome profile

"\Local Storage\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.localstorage" 

"\Local Storage\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.localstorage-journal" 

"\databases\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0" 

"\IndexedDB\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb" 

"\File System"

Please backup the \File System folder before delete, as it might contain data from other Chrome applications, and also it's contain the readable backups of the Tabs Outliner tree - so if you do so on a system that previously have the TO it's a must to backup this folder.

2) Restore your TO database in the 

"\IndexedDB\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb" 

folder

The content of this folder must not contain any other subfolders.

3) Start Chrome, start TO - it must read the database.

If this not hapen, because the database is corrupted for example, then there is a way to restore tree by backups from \File System folder on source PC.

[drag...@gmail.com]

Thanks Vladyslav Volovyk for this amazing extension and excellent notes on how to restore my (huge) session after I installed a new OS on a different drive when my old OS somehow got corrupted and stopped booting.

Tabs Outliner is such a part of my daily browsing that I almost took it for granted, and since I use Chrome Sync it gets installed on every new machine I sign into, but I didn't even think of making a backup of my old session until it was too late.

Now I'm going to look at the options to keep it in sync across all my machines, because it is quite a bit of work to merge my sessions, and many times I've saved something on one machine that would be useful on another.

[2nv...@gmail.com]

Thank you thank you. TO is super important to the way i catalog my browser history and in many ways it's completely replaced bookmarking. I still have bookmarks but my day to day doesn't involve bookmarks at all. I got worried cause originally i tried the method in the OP and no go. But this, this worked perfectly. That being said, and I do LOVE TO, i really feel like there should be an easier way to have the tree saves and transferred between PCs. Anyway, I'll take what i can get, but i just wanted to thank you for making a huge difference. I was seriously worried. I have a lot of important pages there and only there.

[rodrigo...@gmail.com]

Hey Vladyslav, would you mind to share how to restore from the "\File System folder on source PC"? It would be very useful in case I accidentally delete a window with several tabs on it (yup, it just happened to me today). :)

[Vladyslav Volovyk]

In this group here was same case recently, and i give some advice on how to restore previous version of the tree:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/tabs-outliner-support-group/sao3WTioNAI/-02OApDbnGQJ

as for restoring directly from files, it's meantime very complicated, but i plan soon return to development and release a version where such things as restoring from automatic backups will be possible just from GUI.

Best.
Vladyslav

[rodrigo...@gmail.com]

Thank you, that method is just absolutely fine for me (I was able to manually restore the tabs from the File System directory, but the procedure is a nightmare, the way you show on the video is much much better hehe). Thank you very much. :)

[tara...@gmail.com]

Hi Vladyslav,

I've re-installed a new OS and would like to transfer my TO from the old computer to the new one. I followed your instructions from your Feb 11 but nothing happens for me. All the steps work fine without error, but when Chrome starts up, TO just contains the current session (it doesn't restore the manually copied session..)

Thanks

Taras

[tara...@gmail.com]

Ok this is really weird. I left the state of the restore as it was for a couple of days, during which I would have restarted my computer & chrome a few times, and now my old TO tree is appearing! Not sure what has changed, but looks like my issue is now fixed.

Thanks

Taras

[gaelled...@gmail.com]

Hello,

I'm a very happy user of your extension. It has helped me a lot since i'm a person that always had a lot of tabs open but felt so annoyed that they become unreadable in chrome. It's really a great product! But then.. after several years of only occasional cleaning up, i started to do a major clean-up yesterday, until it suddenly crashed. :( I lost all the data. I felt terrible and started to look for solutions online immediately. I have tried several of your suggestions but i'm so sorry to say that they all didnt work. (maybe since i tried one it is normal that the other ones dont work anymore because it's already messed up?) I don't know.. I'm just sending you this message in the hope that you would still find a way to recover my data. I can send you the data you asked in the message above if it would help you?

Hopefully you can help me!
Thanks a lot in advance!

[Vladyslav Volovyk]

please contact me directly by email:

vladysla...@gmail.com
Please provide the content of this page:
chrome://version/

Also please describe how Tabs Outliner is now behave - does it starts, if so - with absent tree or with new tree? 
In worst case when all internal Tabs outliner backups is overwritten data can be restored from a system drive backup or from Previous Folder Version feature of your OS (on windows it's accessible through properties context menu item of the folder) - i will try to guide you of how to do so.

Best Regards
Vladyslav.

[gar...@gmail.com]

i use to be able to drag the top session into word but now it crashes tabs outliner in win 8.1.
i can drag individual windows but not the Current Session at the top of the tree.
thanks for your help!
gary

[nita.v...@gmail.com]

Hello Vladyslav, i did how u told but i cant save more tabs on TO i just press the green cross and close chrome then the TO, when i come back its gone, how can i solve this? Please help, i just reinstalled my windows and TO and all 6.000 saved tabs means alot to me.

[it.ar...@gmail.com]

The same thing just happened with me as it did with dragon788. I always thought I had great backups, but I missed this one.

Thanks Vladyslav!!

[2nv...@gmail.com]

Hi Vlad.

So, I had to reformat my computer. And I didn't want to make the same mistake as last time, so I saved the TO page as html. Unfortunately I hadn't expanded all the nodes. But I also copied all the nodes and saved another backup as a google doc. And from that I was able to export as html. In any case. I have 2 backups. The problem is, I can't seem to drag the content from the html back into TO. When I drag, it just adds one entry in TO with a name as long as the html file. So, I'm doing something wrong. I'm hoping you can point me in the right direction? I'm sure i have all I need just not sure how to properly restore. This is the one thing about TO I find a bit frustrating, though I recently read that you are offering a simplified service to deal with this. I'll have to look into that cause my browsing experience is completely dependent on TO.

Anyway, let me know if you have any solutions. I'd appreciate it. Thanks again.

[2nv...@gmail.com]

Hi Vlad.
So, I had to reformat my computer. And I didn't want to make the same mistake as last time, so I saved the TO page as html. Unfortunately I hadn't expanded all the nodes. But I also copied all the nodes and saved another backup as a google doc. And from that I was able to export as html. In any case. I have 2 backups. The problem is, I can't seem to drag the content from the html back into TO. When I drag, it just adds one entry in TO with a name as long as the html file. So, I'm doing something wrong. I'm hoping you can point me in the right direction? I'm sure i have all I need just not sure how to properly restore. This is the one thing about TO I find a bit frustrating, though I recently read that you are offering a simplified service to deal with this. I'll have to look into that cause my browsing experience is completely dependent on TO.

Anyway, let me know if you have any solutions. I'd appreciate it. Thanks again.

Sasha

[Chiramisu]

Woohooo it worked!!! Thank you so much for that update with the procedure to migrate the date. I had been trying to do this for some time and wasn't aware that Chrome backed up data so rigorously. >.<

Cheers! :D

[slimsh...@gmail.com]

I don't know what you are talking about with this alleged solution, because this happened TWO times for no reason, and there is no list in that developers console older then 15 minutes, even though there are several files up to 2 years old in the folders. At this second time which just happened, there are also some files with the correct timestamp os before the tree was deleted in the long-long-long-long-name folder under INdexDB. But for some reason you will not tell us how to restore them simply using the files. Even if it is "complicated" it is of course better and easier then using a developers console which does not work! So please show the place where the method of restoring the files by renaming them or moving their locations or deleting some or changing a timestamp with instructions on how to do that or changing a registry entry etc., telling us where the detailed and exact instructions to do this with the files is located because nothing written here will work at all!

In another comment you keep writing "there is a way" to restore this from the backups in the File System folder, but you will not write the way, why not?! Please write it!

[rawtr...@gmail.com]

vlad, did you fix this yet to so its much easier and doesn't require 1. uninstall + 2. reinstall of your application? there has to be an easier way for the user.

[erik.t...@gmail.com]

Bump!

[bokono...@gmail.com]

I followed this procedure. Using the correct Chrome profile, I installed TO on the target PC. Then I deleted:
"\databases\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0"

"\IndexedDB\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb"

"\File System"

The following folders did not exist:
"\Local Storage\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.localstorage"

"\Local Storage\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.localstorage-journal"

I then copied the TO folder from a working TO installation on a source PC:
"\IndexedDB\chrome-extension_eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl_0.indexeddb.leveldb" to the target PC.

When I launch Chrome, then TO, the tree isn't a new tree, but it's an empty tree, except for the following nodes: the new Chrome window, TO, and a blank node with a spinning circle icon (as if it's trying to do something).

The tree works on the source PC. If this is a corruption issue, is there any way to de-corrupt the working tree on the source PC?

[2nv...@gmail.com]

It never fails. Every time i get a new computer or reformat, out of the hundreds of things I need to do to get the computer back where I want it, the most frustrating of all is always trying (unsuccessfully) to migrate my TO. It's never worked. No matter how many times I try and follow the seemingly simple instructions, it just never works. And while TO is super important to me, and I now have at least 3 backups from previous computers/installations which are sitting there useless, by the time I give up after not getting help, I'm so pissed off I refuse to buy the paid mode, just on principle, because I'm paying for what at that point? To start over from scratch?

So frustrating. These instructions suck. Sorry man, your extension is AMAZING. Honestly the single most useful extension in the store, and by far, but it shouldn't be like this whenever I need to change computers. So here I am again, with a saved html file and a backed up egg folder and nothing to show for it. And again, I'm too pissed to pay for this now that i have to start over.

Sorry. I had to vent.

[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. "

[prom...@gmail.com]

Please HELP!

I stupidly uninstalled and reinstalled TO (because it was having some problems), expecting that TO would go and find the data folder and automatically restore the whole tree.

If I get it right, unless I had kept a backup of the tree, it's impossible to recover my 1000 tabs :(
Is that right?

Regards
Nicolas

[boor...@gmail.com]

TO automatically backs up your Tabs to google drive, HOWEVER, you have to set it up first. If you have no backups under the back up tab, then no you have no backups.

[geo...@providentdata.com]

If this is true, that means that the help text in the extension is wrong:

"Also, to do a backup/export you can perform standard "Save as complete Html" operation in the Tabs Outliner window (by Ctrl-S).
The resulting file will be very usable to reopen all your tabs, as they will be exported as regular HTML links.
You will even be able to drag anything from such a file back to the main Tabs Outliner window."

I have numerous backups as HTML, made as recommended by the developer.

However, as of a few months ago it seems like these no longer can be restored: they display fine, but dragging anything from there to a "live" Tabs Outliner window just displays the JSON that makes up the tree, and I haven't found any other way yet that can successfully restore my tabs to an existing TO window. I can open the links in the backup, one at a time -- but considering that the point of the extension is to manage numerous tabs, opening one link at a time and re-sorting into windows would take an *excruciating* amount of time.

Does anyone have a working solution for how to get data out of an existing HTML backup back into Tabs Outliner?

[geo...@providentdata.com]

Take that back -- dragging a tree to an existing TO window doesn't display JSON, it just doesn't do anything. (Dragging a link opens the link.)

Doesn't really affect the problem, of course -- still can't find a way to restore HTML backups of TO trees. If anyone can help with this I'd greatly appreciate it.

[sergm...@gmail.com]

In order to make the saved html tree file work (to make its nodes draggable to TO):
- Open the saved html tile in a text editor
- Find and cut the text '<style id="usersCustomColorsStyleshit"></style>' (with no quotes).
- Find the '<head>' text (no quotes, should come few lines before the style tag above) and paste the cut text right after it.
- Save the file.
- Open it in Chrome.
Now you should be able to drag the tree nodes.

[cl...@martinez.com.bo]

@sergm...@gmail.com

You are a genius. Thank you so much!!

[albu...@gmail.com]

There does not appear to be a sync across devices option in the paid version. is this the case or am I missing something. Manually restoring from back defeats the purpose as tress on different devices get out of sync.

Alex

[har...@airg.com]

this is the answer!!!

thank you so much!