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

Question

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.

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

What do you mean "Edge turned off"?

Answer 3

The same has happened to me, using edge://sync-internals/ i see the following but only a few appear in the collection bar ??

I just want to recover them on this machine ... please someone help

Need clear simple instructions

Answer 4

The same has happened to me, using edge://sync-internals/ i see the following but only a few appear in the collection bar ??

I just want to recover them on this machine ... please someone help

Collection	1073	1073		Running

Answer 5

You can follow the steps to check if you can find your missing content:

Create a new Profil for Edge, then copy the files under the following path to another Profil, and check whether the collections can be viewed normally in the new Profil.

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Collections

Note: The second step should be done with Edge turned off, because if Edge is on, it will synchronize the collections.