Restore Previous open tabs after Windows Update

Hello,

My name is Ben, and I'm with Microsoft Edge as  Community Manager. I saw this thread and wanted to check in on this issue, in order to see if I could help.

If I understand your concern, you are frustrated you lost your previous tabs and, while you know how to save tabs in the future, you wished for a method of recovering a large number of lost tabs. Is that correct? If that's the case, my first thought is to see if the History has them. This issue has happened to me before. When I go to the "..." in the top right corner, click on History, it can show individual websites. If a large number of tabs were closed all at once, recently, one of the top options should have an icon that looks like a stack of squares. Clicking on that will restore all lost tabs.

If, however, the history does not have this tab-block, then the issue may not be easily restored. Should that be the case, I sincerely apologize. In either situation, I am forwarding this report to the team so they can look into other ways to prevent data loss in the future. If you have any other questions, or if this doesn't speak to the matter, please let me know.

Thank you, and have a great day!

-Ben

OK, sorry, I was only reacting to the advisor's unhelpful suggestion. If you're looking for a way to find out which tabs were opened in the session that was lost during the update, I'm afraid it's not straightforward and may not be possible. However, there is an online tool that may help.

First, you have to find the file that Edge uses to store details of open tabs in a particular session. Each profile has its own set of files, so if you only have one profile, its data are stored in a folder called Default. You can open this folder thus:

1. Close down all Edge instances.
2. Copy this path:
   %localappdata%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default
3. Open File Explorer (Winkey + E), paste into the address bar and press Enter.
4. Open the folder called Sessions. Each file in that folder contains details of the current and at least one previous session.
   1. If you see a file called Tabs_{long number} whose modified date corresponds to the session you lost, you're in luck.
   2. If you don't see any file from the lost session, right-click on the Sessions folder and select Restore previous version. If you see a previous version with a likely-looking date, click Restore > Restore to and choose a folder to restore to, e.g. on your desktop.
5. If you found a likely-looking Tabs_... file,
   1. Open Edge and navigate to Chrome Session Restore / Recovery of corrupted Session files (lsauer.net)
   2. Follow the instructions on the page to inject the file either by drag-and-drop or by using the Choose filesbox.
   3. The small arrow ⏷ should reveal the tabs from the session concerned. Each entry is a link to the page, so you can open the ones you want in the current Edge session.

Good luck!

I'm sorry that the answer was not helpful.

Another suggestion is to go to your browsing history and open the missing page

But don't worry, other colleagues will be able to help you with new ideas

Sincerely

Talita

As I wrote in my original post:

"I have solved the problem for future tabs by selecting the "Continue where you left off" options in the "On startup" settings, but that does nothing to help me with the tabs I have already lost."

I have already tried that feature, and it does not work in a way that helps me.

The instructions you were given are for a different program, the original version of Microsoft Edge which has now reached end-of-support and which will be removed automatically next month.

To find the setting you need, click ⋯ (Settings and more) > Settings > On start-up and select Continue where you left off.