Import instructions problem

[Fyren]

If you're using Firefox 56+, I think the instructions end up with you exporting a set of tabs from probably months ago.

I think since 56, instead of PROFILE/sessionstore.js, tab session data is now saved in PROFILE/sessionstore-backups/. I'm not sure if it works differently if you had only been using releases and not nightly (I've been using nightly builds), but my profile ended up with current session info in sessionstore-backups/ plus an old/stale, unused sessionstore.js. When I ran 52 ESR on my profile, it ended up loading the old set of tabs out of sessionstore.js. (If your profile was never run pre-56, maybe running 52 ESR would just give you no tabs at all?)

I had to overwrite sessionstore.js with the latest .js out of sessionstore-backups to get my current tabs in ESR to export.

[kesselborn]

? I am not sure I 100% understand. I this about importing old tabgroups sessions? This import works for backups that were created manually with tabgroups only.

[Fyren]

Where the session info is stored changed in 56. In my case, since I was using Firefox both before and after the change, when I installed 52 to try to export it, it showed me an ancient tab session.

[PageDownForWhat]

Yes, you should really reload the same version you were previously running that supported the old tabgroup extension, and do the manual export from there. Suggesting that people go specifically to ESR (52) will force them to deal with the sessionstore.js vs recovery.jsonlz4 changeover. ESR will be looking for sessionstore.js and it will be very stale since later versions store your tab groups elsewhere.
In fact, reinstalling to the latest version of 56 would likely always work, since it would read sessionstore.js if it couldn't find sessionstore-backups.

[Fyren]

I was using a particular nightly build that happened to have tab groups mostly working, but the options/settings for it were not, so I couldn't export from it.

[mirh]

Ehrrrrmmm..
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=944918#c30