Need to get my bookmarks from Opera 21
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vinp1973 last edited by
Hello,
Recently my system was replaced and in the process the older version of Opera I had on my system (Opera 21.0.1432.67) was removed and the Opera 22 was installed instead. I had made a back up of all my previous Opera files before the system swap, and it also has the bookmarks.adr file. But I cannot figure out how I could get my bookmarks from this file into the new version of Opera. Everything looks so new and complex, and there appears no straightforward way to get the bookmarks from the .adr file. Even the directory structure inside the Opera folder is nothing similar. Can anyone please guide me on this? Greatly appreciate your help and I hope there is a way to get back my bookmarks. It is quite exasperating when the browser developers make fancy changes without any indication or guidelines to the users about how to port data from previous versions.
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lem729 last edited by
Bookmarks.adr sounds like your Presto bookmarks, not bookmarks from Opera 21. If you have Opera Presto, vers. 12, on your system, you could use the Bookmarks importer feature in Opera 22. (Opera Menu/More Tools/Bookmarks Importer).
If you backed up previous Opera files, don't you have just a bookmarks file from Opera 21. If you have that, you could just copy it into the Opera 22 profile, replacing the bookmarks file that is there.
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vinp1973 last edited by
Thanks lem729 for your comment. I am not sure where to find the bookmarks file in the Opera 21 folder. I cannot see a file by that name, except for bookmarks.adr inside the defaults folder. Can you provide me with some pointers?
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vinp1973 last edited by
that is not useful, because I know that all my opera related files are under C:\Program Files\Opera, which is the path shown in about Opera as well. So I would need more specific information, as to which file to copy to the related folder in Opera 22 so as to retrieve my bookmarks.
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lem729 last edited by
The question is when you upgrade from Opera 21 to Opera 22, what happens to the Opera 21 profile? The bookmarks were in the Opera 21 profile. In the poster's upgrade, the bookmarks were lost -- no longer show up in Opera 22. If there were a place on the computer where the Opera 21 profile is preserved, notwithstanding the upgrade, then he could just go into the profile, and copy the bookmarks file into the Opera 22 profile folder.
Now VinP1973 never posted his Operating system, so we don't know where the Opera 21 profile was located on his computer. But he says, "I had made a back up of all my previous Opera files before the system swap." All of them? If so, then he must have a copy of the Opera 21 profile, called "Opera Stable Profile." There's a file in that profile called "bookmarks." [It is not called bookmarks.adr, which is a file from old Opera 12 or earlier] Just copy that file called "bookmarks" from the Opera 21 profile into the profile folder in Opera 22. But first, he needs to make sure that Opera closed -- not running -- when he does that.
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vinp1973 last edited by
Thanks lem729 for your comments. The OS is Windows 7. My system was replaced as I had mentioned previously, hence it was not an upgrade but a fresh installation. I did back up all the Opera data from my previous system (I copied the entire folder C:\Program Files/Opera to an external hard disk), but as I had written in a previous post I cannot find any file by name bookmarks in the data backed up from the previous version of Opera. For that matter, I cannot see the file in any of the folders relating to Opera 22 as well. It could be that I am not right about the version of the Opera I had previously before the system swap, and I had mentioned Opera 21 based on the fact that I could see an Opera 21 installer in the downloads folder from my previous machine. So I would like to know, if I had to retrieve the data somehow from the bookmarks.adr file into Opera 22, is there a way to do this, even if I had to convert the file to a different format before doing so? Can you help me with the related steps?
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leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by
I did back up all the Opera data from my previous system (I copied the entire folder C:\Program Files/Opera to an external hard disk), but as I had written in a previous post I cannot find any file by name bookmarks in the data backed up from the previous version of Opera.
Unless you had used the standalone install, your profile were at %appdata% (users/<username>/appdata/roaming/Opera Software/Opera most probably). If that folder and/or its files weren't backuped then i'm afraid you have lost your data.
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lem729 last edited by admin
Well, since the bookmarks.adr file comes from the old Opera Presto one possibility is to install Opera 12.17 (Opera Presto) then copy the bookmarks adr file into the profile of it. If the bookmarks show up there, you are half way home.
Then you need to use the bookmarks importer in opera 22, specifically designed to move bookmarks from Opera (Presto) 12.17 in your case to Opera 22. You can access the importer in Opera 22 by clicking on the Opera Menu (Opera logo on upper left of browser), More Tools, and the Bookmarks importer. Hopefully it will not be greyed out and will work. but wait. Don't act on this yet!We have had some discussion in the forum on why sometimes the import feature doesn't -- is greyed out. Here's a link to a post by leocg,
https://forums.opera.com/topic/2839/new-install-but-no-bookmarks-import/17
where he implicitly suggests that you first completely uninstall Opera 22 first. Why? He believes that for the bookmarks importer to work, it is important to have installed Opera Presto (12.17 ) FIRST on the computer, and Opera will then (if Opera 22 is completely uninstalled) put it in a default location. So after you install Opera 12.17, then copy your bookmarks adr file into the profile of this Opera 12.17. Hopefully the bookmarks show up there (if the file is not corrupted). After you have the bookmarks in opera 12.17 (of course,
keeping our fingers crossed), install Opera 22. Opera will put it in a default location on your computer. And then follow the steps in the first paragraph to start up the Bookmarks Importer (Opera Menu/More Tools/bookmarks Importer). Hopefully when you get to the Importer it will not be greyed out/but will be active and you can import the now bookmarks in Opera 12.17 (from that bookmarks.adr file) into Opera 22. -
lem729 last edited by
You said: "I did back up all the Opera data from my previous system (I copied the entire folder C:\Program Files/Opera to an external hard disk), but as I had written in a previous post I cannot find any file by name bookmarks in the data backed up from the previous version of Opera."
I'm not sure about your Operating system, but in Windows 7 and I believe elsewhere the Opera files are in two locations. There's the root location, where the installation folder is (In my computer it's at c:\program files (x86)\Opera, and that seems to be what you copied. And there's also the profile location (that would have the bookmarks file). When you say you got all the Opera files, I suspect you didn't copy the profile folder, which is too bad, because that's the key file with your bookmarks. In my computer (Windows 7) for Opera 21 and now 22, the profile location is: C:\Users\Mel\AppData\Roaming\Opera Software\Opera Stable. When you click on the menu in Opera 21 or Opera 22, and go to About Opera, you can find the profile location. The profile folder in Opera 21 or Opera 22 is called, "Opera Stable." In the future, always be sure to make a backup copy of your profile (now called Opera Stable).
Anyway, per my last post, not all is lost.
Have no fear! You can still use that bookmarks.adr file from Opera 12 presumably and get it into Opera 22, though it takes a few steps, that I have set forth in that post. -
vinp1973 last edited by
thanks lem729 for your detailed guidance. I was not aware of the profile location under C/Users, so I did copy only the Opera folder under C:\Program Files as part of my backup. I will have to follow your procedure about uninstalling Opera 22, installing Opera 12.17 and then reinstalling Opera 22. I can see that the Import Bookmarks option is currently greyed out in my Opera 22 browser, and hopefully, as you suggest I would be able to use the feature once I have installed Opera 12.17 and retrieved all my bookmarks, and subsequently installed Opera 22 on top. I shall keep you posted. As you say, fingers crossed at this point
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vinp1973 last edited by
lem729, I did as you suggested but as soon as I installed Opera Presto 12.17, the auto-update option kicked in and updated Opera to version 21, and upon a restart of the browser, I was back at version 22 again, with the same interface and the same set of options. In essence, I am now back to square one. I could not find the files that you had mentioned under C\Users directory path, even after the re-installation. Based on this outcome, I presume I would have to give up the hope of retrieving my old bookmarks. As a user this is quite frustrating to me, and I deem it a high-handed approach on the part of Opera, to leave users with no option of backward compatibility. This in my opinion is a classic example of developers doing their own thing, without bearing in mind the preferences of the end-users as well. At this point, I am seriously considering abandoning Opera forever, for good, and choose other saner options instead.
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lem729 last edited by
It is not supposed to auto-update Opera Presto 12.17 to Opera 21. Opera Presto is never supposed to update beyond 12.17. Maybe someone can comment on that, but that is NEVER supposed to happen. Opera Blink (versions 15 and above auto-update), but Opera Presto is not supposed to auto-update into Opera Blink.
Are you sure you actually installed Opera vers. 12.17? I do understand your frustration. Here's a download location I found on the Opera website.
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mmcl26554 last edited by
Did you make a backup of your files from Win7, such as using microsoft "easy transfer"? If you did then you files are in that and you can restore all your files or selected filses from win7 to the new operating system install such as win8.1 or a fresh reinstall of win7. When I do a new install I just copy the whole folder C:\Users\michael\AppData\Roaming\Opera Software\Opera Stable and then install Opera. The only files that don't make it are the saved passwords, but everything else is there. So, if you made some kind of full backup of your hard drive prior to the new install then you have what you need, but if you didn't do that you may be out of luck. If you ever transferred your bookmarks to another browser it may be possible to export them into Opera.
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sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by
If you copied bookmarks.adr from C:\Program Files\Opera\defaults then what you have are the default bookmarks TT come with Opera - probably not useful to you. And no, Opera 12.17 does not auto-update to Opera 22 ... but the "Welcome to Opera" first run page has a link to download and install 22. Note that installing 22 does not replace or remove 12.17 - I just installed both on a new computer so I know. They are both there, though the icons on the desktop are hard to tell apart at first glance. (The icon for Opera 12.17 has more shading to it, the icon for 22 looks pretty flat.)
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vinp1973 last edited by
Thanks for your comments. To answer the question from Michael, I did not use an option such as "easy transfer", but pretty much did dump the entire C drive to an external hard-disk. So I guess I should have all of the data that I used to have on my system before it was replaced. I was wrong about the assessment that I had downloaded Opera 12.17 and upon installation, it was automatically updated to the latest version. I had installed a later version by mistake. But this time, I did download Opera 12.17 from the link provided by lem729 and I could install and start the browser without any update. Now I could see the exact same directory structure inside the new Opera folder, as I had in my backup. I tried replacing the bookmarks.adr file inside the defaults folder with what I had in my backup. When I restarted the browser after this, I could not see my bookmarks. So I decided to take it to the next level. I replaced the entire contents of the Opera folder with the files/folders in my backup, but even after that, upon restarting, I could not see my bookmarks. I am sure that I am missing something. I am willing to mail the entire directory, zipped, and whatever other related files anyone might need to try this out at their end. This is the last resort I am looking at.
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Deleted User last edited by
If you do indeed have the c drive files, look for a file called appdata. In it will be three files called local, common(I think), and roaming. If you have those you need only the roaming profile of either Opera or Opera software. Opera will contain the profile of 12.17 and below, Opera software will contain the profile of 15 and above and will be labeled as stable, next, and developer depending on what you used. If you have those profiles just copy the whole thing and paste on your new install and voila, Opera as previously set up.
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Deleted User last edited by
One more thing. You may have to turn on the option in Windows Folder Options to view hidden files to see the appdata folder on your new Windows installation as well as the previously dumped files.
