Skip to content
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

How to generate a HAR file

HAR (HTTP Archive) files can help our team understand problems faster

If you raise a technical issue with our customer support team, we may ask you to generate and send on a HAR file to help our investigation. HAR files can show us how your browser interacts with our website, and can reveal where the issue originates.

Most browsers support HAR file generation. We've included simple instructions for the most common browsers below, but if you use a different browser you should be able to find similar instructions online.

Chrome

  1. Open the page in The Social History Archive on which you're experiencing issues
  2. Right-click the page and select Inspect
  3. In the Developers Tools panel, click Network
  4. Click the "Preserve log" checkbox - this is an important step to ensure data is actually recorded in the HAR file 
  5. Click the "record" button, then the recycle bin icon to clear the existing logs already captured in the Network tab
  6. Re-attempt the steps that cause the technical issue
  7. Once the issue has been re-attempted and recorded, click the download button to export the HAR file
  8. Send this file as an attachment to our Support team

Edge

  1. Open the page in The Social History Archive on which you're experiencing issues
  2. Right-click the page and select Inspect
  3. In the Developers Tools panel, click Network
  4. Click the "Preserve log" checkbox - this is an important step to ensure data is actually recorded in the HAR file
  5. Click the "record" button, then the recycle bin icon to clear the existing logs already captured in the Network tab
  6. Re-attempt the steps that cause the technical issue
  7. Once the issue has been re-attempted and recorded, click the download button to export the HAR file
  8. Send this file as an attachment to our Support team

Firefox

  1. Open the page in The Social History Archive on which you're experiencing issues
  2. Right-click the page and select Inspect
  3. In the Developers Tools panel, click Network
  4. The page will record automatically.
  5. Re-attempt the steps that cause the technical issue
  6. Once the issue has been re-attempted and recorded, right-click the File column and click "Save All as HAR"
  7. Save the file and send as an attachment to our Support team

Safari

  1. Open the page in The Social History Archive on which you're experiencing issues
  2. In the Web Inspector, click Network
  3. Click the Disable Caches checkbox
  4. Refresh the page and re-attempt the steps that cause the technical issue
  5. Once the issue has been re-attempted and recorded, select Export
  6. Save the file and send as an attachment to our Support team