Opera: bookmarks gone - you can do that

Opera is one of the most popular internet browsers. This practical tip explains what you can do if your bookmarks are suddenly gone.

Opera: bookmarks gone - causes

If all of the bookmarks are suddenly gone in your Opera browser, this can have various causes:

For example, it is possible that you were accidentally logged out of your Opera account by an update.
The error can also be in the log file of the update.
Finally, a program display error is simply a possible cause of the error.

Even if it sounds banal: First check by clicking on the gray person icon in the top right whether you are still logged into your account. If this is not the case, select the "Sign In" option and log in with your account details. Ideally, your bookmarks will now be displayed again.
You can also try deliberately logging out of your account and then logging back in.
An alternative way to check whether the bookmarks still exist in the program is to call up the bookmark manager using the key combination Ctrl + Shift + B. Your bookmarks should now be displayed here. However, if the manager is empty, you have little chance of restoring your bookmarks unless you have made a backup (see below).
The last chance is to regain access to the bookmarks via the Opera profile directory. This can be found relatively far below under the "About Opera" tab. "Bookmarks" files must appear in this directory, behind which the bookmarks are located.
For verification, enter "% APPDATA% \ Opera Software \ Opera Stable" in the Explorer of the Opera directory. Alternatively, you can also open "% APPDATA% \ .." in this directory and look for the corresponding "Bookmarks" file, which should be a few hundred kilobytes in size.
Find a file "Bookmarks.bak", copy it and replace the smaller existing "Bookmarks" file. This process is like restoring the last backup of your bookmarks. You overwrite the new but empty bookmark file with the information of your previous bookmarks.

To prevent your bookmarks from getting lost again in Opera:

Deactivate the bookmark synchronization in the program settings. This will prevent accidental deleted bookmarks from being removed on all other devices.
Alternatively, you can export the bookmarks to either switch to a different browser or to prevent the loss of your bookmarks. Exporting the bookmarks is not that difficult. We explain how the export works here.

We will explain in another practical tip how you can use the Opera browser with a proxy.