Data entry online can be time-consuming, and composing an email or filling out lengthy forms can take up much of our time, especially when the information gets lost after submitting it due to a timeout error or a site crash. A helpful extension and add-on for both Chrome and Firefox called Lazarus can help prevent this from happening by saving data on forms and retrieving them for you in case you need to resubmit it.
Lazarus is available for both Chrome and Firefox. After installation, you should notice the Lazarus icon on the right corner of the text fields on any website. If you mouse over the icon after entering information, a pop-up should appear telling you that Lazarus is saving the form.
There’s nothing you need to do since the add-on is automatically enabled after installation. Lazarus acts as a backup tool for saving the things you type into a long and detailed online form.
To restore data on a form, simply click on the above-mentioned icon (to the right of the text field). A pop-up window should appear, showing the last information entered in that field. Note that only the most recent information entered is saved, and not others that were entered before. Simply click on the text from the pop-up to restore it back to the form’s text field.
If you don’t want to compromise sensitive information in forms and want a more secure way of restoring form data, you can set a password. To do this, click on the Lazarus icon on the right corner of a text field. Go to Lazarus Options. Under General>Security, check the box beside “Encrypt form and require a password to restore the text.”
After setting a password, the pop-up should now prompt you to enter a password before you can recover data on a form.
Lazarus does not save passwords for log-in pages. However, this can be enabled by going to the Options page. Under General -> What to save, check the box beside “Save passwords”.
On the same page, you can exclude certain websites from using the add-on under Disabled Sites. You can also do this by clicking on the add-on’s icon on a text field and selecting “Disable Lazarus on this site”.
This is also where you can specify how many days to keep the saved forms (it’s defaulted to 10). Forms can be kept for a maximum of 14 days.
Note that this add-on does not currently work in WYSIWYG mode in Chrome, as declared on the add-on’s information page. It also does not save data from a drop-down menu with pre-loaded lists. Only text that you manually type in is saved automatically, as soon as you finish typing and move on to the next field.
Some forms may require confidential information, like Social Security numbers, Credit Card details, to name a few. If you don’t plan on putting in a password, then it is highly recommended that you use this add-on only on your own computer and not a shared one.
If you are keen on filling out forms online, then Lazarus is a great preemptive tool to prevent data loss and having to type it all in again.
