I installed the free upgrade to Windows 10. Now, I see that I've lost all of my files (pictures,videos,..), and more importantly in my case, the content of my bookmarks in Google Chrome. How can I get back the lost bookmarks?
asked Nov 26, 2015 at 12:11
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1Hi Behzad Tahbazzadeh. I edited your question in an attempt to make it more answerable. I also guessed that you are talking about Google Chrome. If I guessed wrong, or if you feel my edits changed your intent, please feel free to edit further.– userCommented Nov 26, 2015 at 13:37
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1Possible duplicate of How do I recover lost/inacessible data from my storage device?– Ben NCommented Nov 27, 2015 at 1:17
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@BenN, I don't think that this is a duplicate of a data recovery question. Given the edits, it seems like files were inadvertently lost due to the upgrade. The suggested fix for data recovery may help resolve this person's issue, but this question comes at the issue from a different angle.– fideliCommented Nov 28, 2015 at 16:52
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4 Answers
Chrome syncs your bookmarks with its servers if you're logged into it with a Google account. If you were logged in previously, log in again and your bookmarks should reappear.
If you weren't logged in, you may still be in luck. Chrome stores bookmarks locally in a file that resides in its AppData folder C:\Users\[your user account]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
There might be a file there called 'Bookmarks.bak'. If so, just remove '.bak' from the end so it's simply called 'Bookmarks' and relaunch Chrome. Your bookmarks should be back.
However, I find it odd that personal data such as pictures and videos have gone missing. I'm unsure why that would have happened, but this may have also lost the Bookmarks.bak file. If this is the case then you're out of luck.
To prevent losing your Chrome bookmarks again, follow these steps:
Export bookmarks from Chrome
- In the top-right corner of the browser window, click the Chrome menu ⋮
- Select Bookmarks > Bookmark Manager.
- Click the Organize menu button in the center pane of Bookmark manager.
- Select Export bookmarks to HTML file...
- Chrome will export your bookmarks as an HTML file, which you can then import into Chrome or another web browser.
For those who experiences the same issue: to prevent it in the future, you might want to setup automatic backup of your Chrome Bookmarks with Backupery for Chrome Bookmarks tool. It just copies all of your bookmarks regularly to some safe place (you could choose from a wide range of destinations - local directory in your computer, external hard drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)
Disclaimer: I am the developer of the tool, the tool is paid.
I loaded Google Chrome on my mother's laptop, and foolishly signed in on it. I then deleted a whole lot of bookmarks that mom's Chrome installation wouldn't require. When I logged on my own machine, I realized that the deletions from Mom's laptop deleted my bookmarks associated with my google acct, too. I keep forgetting that Google syncs like this.
Fixed it in an hour. Here's what I did. I changed the password on my google account and signed in under a new password. I then went to the folder where Chrome stores its bookmark html file, observed that the bookmarks.bak file was substantially larger, so I copied the bak file to Desktop, renamed it Bookmarks. Then I deleted the current Chrome bookmarks file and replaced it with the renamed .bak file from my desktop. Voila! All the previous bookmarks are restored perfectly.
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Welcome to Super User! This duplicates another answer and adds no new content. Please don't post an answer unless you actually have something new to contribute.– DavidPostill ♦Commented Nov 27, 2016 at 21:07