Solution!! - I always have 300+ tabs open across 8 different windows, and I yesterday restarted my computer and forgot to click on the "Restore tabs" box which always appears - all tabs lost!! AAAAAGH!!! I have done this before and never found a solution, but I searched everywhere, all day, and read everything, and formulated this solution for Edge users which restored ALL my tabs and all my windows perfectly (to my huge shock!!😁), and it is unbelievably simple!!:-
- Do NOT close your computer and do not close the Edge browser or you will lose your Session and Tab files containing your lost tabs, as Microsoft in its infinite wisdom only keeps your last closed browsing session, so it will be deleted and replaced if you shut Edge.
- Run this command:- c:\users*enter your own username here*\appdata\local\microsoft\edge\user data\Default\sessions
- On the resulting File Explorer page you will see either 2 (or possibly 3) Session file lines and Tab file lines. Your lost Session file you need will be easy to spot as it will be much larger than the other Session files showing, in my case it was 9 MB, and the Tab file I needed was also larger than the other tab files, they will both also very likely be the oldest files showing). This page is the page the Edge browser refers itself to when it offers to “restore tabs”, and it simply offers to restore the most recent set of Session and Tab files that are showing on this page. So - BUT DO NOT DO THIS YET!!! - NOT TILL YOU REACH STEP 5 BELOW!!! - you simply need to delete from this page all the newer session and tab files showing, just leaving your (lost) old Session and Tab files showing, and Edge will then, when it restarts, simply pick up on these and offer to restore them! Job done!!!! - I would also just mention, I also had an “app”s files showing on this page by the way, so, if you see this, or any other non-Session or non-Tab files showing on the page, just ignore them and leave them exactly as they are. One other thing you can do at this point, if you wish to be “double-safe”, take a copy of ALL the Session and Tab files showing, individually, and paste a copy of each of them somewhere else e.g. your Documents file (as I did), or anywhere else you fancy, just in case you need them, but you shouldn't, and I didn't, then you can delete them afterwards if you wish. Although, if you did just keep a copy of your old (lost) session and tabs files, not the “new” ones, you could always restore them again in the future at anytime if you make the same mistake again but are unlucky enough to accidentally turn your Edge browser off and on again (or your computer turns itself off for whatever reason), which will of course delete your lost tabs session file at that time, forever, before you have a chance to enact all my instructions on this page. Of course it will only be all your hundreds of tabs from today's date you will be reopening, it will not be whatever different hundreds of tabs that you have open at whatever point in the future you make the same mistake.
- End the Edge browser App in Task Manager (I incidentally tried closing it using Browser Task Manager but this wouldn't close it for some reason). It is just the one Edge line in the “Apps section” at the top of Task Manager you shut, not the hundreds in the section below 😀.
- Make sure the Edge browser has shut completely, and you can now go back to the above Session and Tab files page and NOW, simply (but choosing carefully!!) delete all the newer Session and Tab files I refer to in Step 3 leaving only your older, larger, lost, Session file and Tab file you want Edge to offer to restore, showing on the page. You also, by the way, do NOT have to do what Chris MacGregor says in the Chrome link MSPaint4Life refers you to on page 2 of the answers to this question, where he says you have to copy the names of the new Session and Tab files onto the old Session and Tab files you wish to reactivate. I reasoned that that would not be necessary as you are deleting the newer files from the only page Edge looks at when is offers to restore Tabs anyway, so it will purely look at only your old Session and Tab files left on the page and simply offer to re-open those, the name on them would be irrelevant to it, and that is indeed exactly what happened when I reopened edge and it restored my old session perfectly without any need to rename them. Of course, Chris’s answer is talking about recovery of Tabs on Chrome, not Edge, so maybe you do have to do that on Chrome possibly, though I cannot really see why that would be necessary on that browser either for the same reason I mentioned.
- Final step, having deleted the newer Session and Tab files, simply re-open Edge browser, you don't have to actually turn your computer off, I just went into apps and clicked on Microsoft Edge and it opened with a new tab page as usual and came up with the usual “Restore Tabs” option, which I remembered to click this time 🤣🤣🤣, and I immediately got all my lost hundreds of tabs and 8 windows reopened!!!😁😁😁😁 – ECSTATIC!!!!!
I have also now gone into Settings then the Start option, and changed my Start setting to “Open tabs from previous session”, in the hope that whenever I restart my computer in the future it just opens all my tabs and windows up automatically, without me having to remember to click the “Restore tabs” button every time, and I have just turned my computer off and tried it and they all opened instantly😀, so hopefully I will never have this problem again!, but fingers crossed this post helps afew people, as I could not find any clear step by step instructions for Edge users to recover lost tabs anywhere on the web - and I looked everywhere!!! Good luck!!