Where is Opera getting bookmarks from?

[chrisrrr]

chrisrrr last edited by

I've started to use Opera 25 instead of Safari (or I want to, let's say).

I want to import all my bookmarks from Safari, but a very much older set of imported bookmarks are already in Opera, from Safari a few years ago. I did use Opera 9 briefly back then, on a PPC Mac.

I've gone to the user/Library/Application Support/Opera folder and moved out the 'bookmarks.adr' and 'bookmarks' files to the desktop. However, on re-launching Opera 25, all the imported bookmarks are still there! Where is it getting them from? What's more, it hasn't re-created those two files in the Opera folder either.

There's something screwy going on here, but I can't understand what it is...

[chrisrrr]

chrisrrr last edited by

I have supplementary details from further investigation:

I moved out the following Opera components to the desktop so they were not available to the Opera app:

1. user/Library/Application Support/Opera
2. user/Library/Opera
3. user/Library/Caches/com.operasoftware.Opera

When I next launched Opera, those files should have been rebuilt from scratch. In fact, the first 2 were rebuilt, and are less than 1MB in total. HOWEVER... the cache file is 17.9MB !!! That's even larger than the Cache file I moved out. Where has it got that size from? That must be the source of my old bookmarks, but heaven only knows where the information was trawled from.

Would someone from Opera please have the courtesy to reply?

[chrisrrr]

chrisrrr last edited by

(no Edit button??? I'm re-posting as the formatting is awful):

I have supplementary details from further investigation:

I moved out the following Opera components to the desktop so they were not available to the Opera app:

1. user/Library/Application Support/Opera

2. user/Library/Opera

3. user/Library/Caches/com.operasoftware.Opera

When I next launched Opera, those files should have been rebuilt from scratch. In fact, the first 2 were rebuilt, and are less than 1MB in total. HOWEVER... the cache file is 17.9MB !!! That's even larger than the Cache file I moved out. Where has it got that size from? That must be the source of my old bookmarks, but heaven only knows where the information was trawled from.

Would someone from Opera please have the courtesy to reply?

[chrisrrr]

chrisrrr last edited by

Has this forum been abandoned by people who actually work on Opera??? Is this issue just being ignored?

[avl]

avl Opera last edited by

Maybe you posted just before the weekend, and no one knew the answer in that time - and maybe this is a user forum, where users are helped by other users, not necessarily Opera employees.

Anyway, as you've seen, bookmarks from old Opera versions (which used to be stored in Application Support/Opera) are imported on first startup. Opera's current settings and bookmarks are stored in Application Support/com.operasoftware.Opera. If you remove that directory, and you also remove Application Support/Opera, it will create a new profile without importing the old settings from Application Support/Opera.

[chrisrrr]

chrisrrr last edited by

Thank you avi - I'd missed that Opera creates that com.operasoftware folder in Application Support (that's not the format that software usually uses there).

I will move out both folders (and the Library/Opera folder too?), trash the app and the cache files, and reinstall it. I've kept "Opera 12" in case Opera 25 doesn't work out for me ... it doesn't get stuff from there presumably?

[chrisrrr]

chrisrrr last edited by

Ok, so far, so good...

However, I then had the opposite problem! There seemed no way to import bookmarks from Safari to Opera 25 (how did I get them into Opera 12???), but Google came up with an answer (import from Safari to Chrome, copy Chrome bookmarks file to Opera bookmarks).

That worked ok. That leaves two problems unresolved:

1. No bookmark in Opera has a 'favicon', which it did in Safari (& I think Firefox too?). Just a black document page folded in one corner. Very ugly.
2. Is there a substitute in Opera for the Glims add-on? Glims auto-completes Search suggestions in the search bar (and a list of web page suggestions under the search bar) and saves me a LOT of typing! It is similar to what the Google page does, but unlike Google, Glims adapts its suggestions as you go, and even when you click a site, it leaves the search result in the search bar in case you need to go back to it. Perhaps Opera has this natively anyway?

[chrisrrr]

chrisrrr last edited by

Ok, I've discovered the truth about favicons - the ugly black "page folded over" favicon is replaced by the site favicon after you visit the site, so that's cool.

I will ask other questions in a new topic.