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How to recover my data?

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JP
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Summary of Issue

One of the following may have brought you here:

  • I opened the Postman native app and it looks empty - it looks like all my collections disappeared.
  • Data in the Postman native app, including Collections, environments, and globals, has been lost unexpectedly upon opening the app.

Why is this happening?

  • This can happen because of the app's local database getting corrupted or when signing out of the app (which clears all local data).

Resolution steps

Check for synced data

If you were previously logged in to the app with your Postman account and had sync enabled, your data should be backed up to our servers. Signing out of the Postman app, and logging back in again, should restore your work.

To check what is synced to your Postman account, navigate to the link below.

Attempt to recover local data

1. Restore from local database folder

If your work is not backed up to a Postman account, you can attempt to recover data from the app's local storage using the steps below.

Please note: this process will delete any local data for Postman Canary.

If you're using our Chrome app, please follow the instructions in this article instead 

1. Download and install Postman Canary

If you already have Postman Canary installed, make sure to sign-out of the app and quit it before proceeding.

2. Make a copy of the folder: file__0.indexeddb.leveldb in your Postman directory, and paste it into the IndexedDB folder in your PostmanCanary.

Windows

Copy: %appdata%\Postman\IndexedDB​\file__0.indexeddb.leveldb
Paste to: %appdata%\PostmanCanary\Partitions​\<ebcb..>\IndexedDB

macOS

Copy: ~/Library/Application Support/Postman/IndexedDB/file__0.indexeddb.leveldb
Paste to: ~/Library/Application Support/PostmanCanary/Partitions​/<ebcb..>/IndexedDB

Note on using the command line: Please add '-r' on the cp command and do NOT have a slash at the end of the source directory

Linux

Copy: ~/.config/Postman/IndexedDB/file__0.indexeddb.leveldb
Paste to: ~/.config/PostmanCanary/Partitions/<ebcb..>/IndexedDB

IndexedDB.png

3. Open Postman Canary, and bulk export your data from within the app. Save the resulting .json file to your local machine. To learn more, please refer to Data Dumps.

4. Open the stable Postman app (not Canary), and switch to a workspace where any recovered content will be added, and import the .json file you saved in step 3. To learn more, please refer to Importing Data.

5. If any content is recovered, it will be added to your workspace after the import. If no data is recovered, you may only see a few empty default environments 

2. Restore from backup file

1. Alternatively, you can find a backup file "backup-<timestamp>.json" in the following location:

Windows:

%appdata%\Postman\

Mac: 

~/Library/Application Support/Postman

Linux:

~/.config/Postman/

2. You may see a number of backup files with different timestamps, so you may try the most recent one first. 

3. Import data to your workspace. If you are still unable to find some collections, try another backup file. 

 

If you need further assistance, please open a ticket with our Support Team: https://www.postman.com/support

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