My collections have disappeared, how do I recover them? Where is the "Get Started" button for Collections?

Anonymous
2023-02-12T17:25:24+00:00

I turned my computer on today, accessed Edge, went to Collections, and discovered that none of my saved items under Collections headings are available, they have disappeared. Previous Help articles say to click on the "Get Started" button -- I do not see the button. Where is the "Get Started" button on the Collections sidebar. Please help, I have important items in Collections which I need to access today. Thank you.

Microsoft Edge | Favorites, history, and downloads | Windows 11

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Anonymous
2023-04-04T19:47:10+00:00

Here's what I did:

-I browsed to: edge://sync-internals/

-Located "collections" at the bottom and saw my number of collections at 128.

-I clicked the three dots and created a new profile in edge browser and it generated as "profile2" (yours may different, like profile3)

-Went to C:\users\*****\AppData\Local\microsoft\edge\userdata\default\ in File Explorer

-Closed the browser

-Copied the "Collections" folder within that default folder

-Pasted the "Collections" folder into "profile2" of "userdata" (C:\users\*****\AppData\Local\microsoft\edge\userdata)

-Opened the Edge browser

-I clicked the three dots again and opened my original profile and clicked the settings wheel and selected "sign out" on the next page that came up.

-I checked "clear favorites, history, passwords..... from this device". Finished the prompt and signed out.

-This is the most important step: I went back to the home page of the browser in my newly created profile "profile2", clicked the three dots again and signed in with my original profile's credentials (email and password) while in "profile2".
-The browser did a full sync (took a minute) and kept the pasted collections from "profile2" which then all magically became my new original profile.

My collections are now synced across all of my devices, I've confirmed.

I've also saved the original "Collections" folder in safe place in case this happens ever again.

Daniel Stewart

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-02-26T19:07:10+00:00

    Guys, if you're looking for collections they are in Bing

    Go to bing.com and click the stack next to your profile and reward points counter.

    First thing is collections

    Microsoft, bring this back, don't lock it away in Bing. Make it a thing for Edge like it was before.

    To Jerbear_798, Thanks for the help finding disappeared collections. So, I have to go to Bing and then open the '...' to get to 'More tools' and I found Collections at the top of that tab.

    I really would like to copy the Collections information (links) to a resident file on my computer, but don't know how. Can you please help me with that? Thanks so much.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-04-18T05:00:48+00:00

    This is absolute garbage.

    First, the 'official' MS support responses have been pathetic. Example 'Turn Edge Off' instead of simply saying 'Close all instances of Edge.' Just mind blowingly ridiculous.. And a bunch of other examples of pathetically poor communication skills I could get into, but wont.

    **And thanks to the folks also impacted by this garbage that actually provided useful information. It can't ultimately help me because my data is gone, but I certainly appreciate you taking the time. And your time has clearly helped others. It **DID** help me prove my data is gone; so there's that.**

    Second, my collection data is actually gone. I checked on both bing.com, and in Edge itself by accessing ... / More Tools / Collections. This is absolutely unacceptable.

    Both bing.com and my local report had a three collection items. The first I created a long time ago, and it had two items in it. I recognize it, but I haven't seen it in, I don't know, 1+ years??? The other two collection items I never created or used (Other Saves and Watch Later); both of which had zero items in them. All of this was from when I first discovered the feature a long time ago, and before I adopted using Edget on a regular basis.

    Somewhat recently I reconsidered Edge and started to invest time in it. That's when I started to explore Collections more. At this point I believe I had about 10 collections and maybe 50+ links saved across all of them. But I'll never know because Edge lost them all. ヽ(ಠ_ಠ)ノ

    Is this a beta feature?

    Are there warnings about how to avoid losing the data?

    Can we get competent responses from the company that provides the product?

    Garbage...

    /rant

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-05-09T19:36:56+00:00

    this did not work for me and i can't access my my microsoft edge collections. I keep getting told the site is "blocked" "contact the site owner for assistance" yeah.. no lucke contacting microsoft

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-05-23T13:01:10+00:00

    I have 49 folders in Sync Internals Collections. I don't know how to get the files back in my Collections folder. I'm worried about losing everything. This is something Edge did. Can Edge reverse what it did to get the Collections back?

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