It’s going to be a mild pitting, as such I don’t feel that the Pit is the right place for it. But I want to whine to someone…
I have an older tablet running Android 5 and using Google Chrome as the browser. This is my personal “mess around” device and not my main device. As such it has a different username and Google account than everything else I use. It’s served me for many years and I’m comfortable with it and have seen no need to upgrade. It did get to the point, however, where I wanted to wipe it and start over.
I had lots and lots of important (to me, anyway) bookmarks stored in Chrome on this tablet. And I didn’t bother synching them to another device because I only used them on that device. So, naturally, I backed up everything else that I might need (documents and pics mostly) before invoking the factory reset.
But as to backing up the Chrome bookmarks? I couldn’t find a way to do it. The Bookmark Import/Export option is not available. Not to worry though, the Google support pages tell me that, since I’m logged in, my bookmarks are synched and I can use them on any other computer in the Omniverse! All I have to do is log onto that computer and log in to Google and voilà, my bookmarks will be available. And I chose to believe that instead of trying to find a way to do it anyways. After all, it’s cloud storage. It should work.
Bullpucky. After resetting and restoring all the apps I wanted to keep I logged into Chrome and clicked on Bookmarks. And got a message that Google no longer supported my OS. So what? All you have to do is make an HTML page available to me! It’s a list of URLs for crying out loud! But no, no bookmarks.
I went to a more current PC and logged in to that account from Google. No bookmarks. None.
I can’t begin to express my outrage, disgust and regret. I had many bookmarks that I referred to a few times a year, but refer to them I did. They are gone now and I can’t even begin to figure out how I will reconstitute the list. I’ve lost articles on computing (ha!) finance, travel and shopping (things that I would come across that weren’t necessarily on Amazon so not in a Wishlist). And worst of all are all the reference pages that I came across and fastidiously sorted into their proper folders against the day I might need them.
Cloud storage? Pah. What wounds me the most is that Google could have provided a simple export function. Or they could at least have mentioned on the support page that this was a consequence of using an older OS.
I have scoured forums on Google, Chrome and Android looking for a way around this, to no avail. Remember that Chrome reports that there are no bookmarks to be had. I even dove into the APP DATA folder on Windows, but since the account was never synched on a WIndows machine, there’s nothing to be found. This is MPSIMS, not GQ, so please don’t feel obligated to delve into this on my behalf. (I know this community has a lot of helpful people.) I’ve accepted my fate, but I will rage against it (at least in my mind) for a while yet.
This is just a poor me post. 