Session restore is a handy feature available in all major web browsers, including Microsoft Edge. The session restore feature saves information about all open tabs before closing the browser and automatically opens previously open tabs so that users can resume work where they left off.
The session restore feature in web browsers is like the hibernation feature in the Windows operating system. Windows OS also saves all data from memory to disk when you put your PC into hibernation, and the same is data used to resume from hibernation.
While session restore is a handy feature, it’s not turned on by default in Edge. Therefore, when you run Edge after closing it down, it doesn’t automatically restore previous session tabs.
You can configure the Edge browser to automatically restore previous session tabs upon launching the web browser. This means that, when you launch Edge browser on your Windows 10/11 device, it will automatically restore all previous tabs that were open while terminating the browser.
Complete the given below directions to configure Edge to automatically restore the previous session when it’s launched.
Automatically restore the previous session in Edge (new Chrome based Edge)
Step 1: Click on the More icon and then click the Settings option to open the Edge settings page.
Step 2: On the left side, click Start, home, and new tabs.
Step 3: On the right side, in the When Edge starts section, select Open tabs from the previous session radio button. That’s it.
Restore the previous session in Edge (old version)
NOTE: At times, when you launch Edge browser after a crash, it might not restore previous session tabs. That said, it works most of the time.
Step 1: Open Edge browser. Click the More icon (see picture below) and then click Settings.
Step 2: Here, under Open Microsoft Edge with section, select the Previous pages option. That’s it!
From here onwards, Edge will save the session tabs before closing and will automatically open previous session tabs when you start it.
There are extensions available for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome to better handle this session restore feature. Sadly, there is no extension as such for the Edge browser yet to make the most out of this feature.
ken says
The problem is nobody’s going to see these until they’re in a major problem situation, like I am!
Just browsing tonight with edge. I had (note: HAD!) about TWENTY windows open with twenty or thirty TABS open in each window. I don’t know, I hadn’t counted them. So, 400-600 tabs of work OPEN.
Edge just magically crashes as I clicked on something, BAM! Okay, no big deal. IT’s happened before. I have “open to previous tabs” checked so they’ll all come up. NO! NO??????????????
Where’d they go? Why’s it opening to a new page? Okay, let’s check history (3 dots up to the right, scroll down to history, click it). History is BLANK! UTTERLY BLANK. NOTHING. There should be HUNDREDS OF THINGS there, from what I was doing immediately before the crash to last week, to last MONTH! NOTHING! NOT ONE THING.
Did a “restore point” to yesterday morning. NOTHING there. NO HISTORY AT ALL. closed edge. Reboot. New window. There’s ONE PDF FILE I had had open in one of my tabs in one of my windows – I recognize it. STILL NOTHING in history. GONE.
Something I read suggested getting into user data and find “SESSIONS” and see if I couldn’t restore previous SESSIONS. ENTIRE Sessions file is only 1kb or so. I know just the windows and tabs I had open should be a lot bigger than 1kb.
WHat on earth happened?
NOW this is the clinker: AS I CLICK ON THOSE THREE DOTS up at the right hand side of the monitor and go down to “history,” and click on history, there are a number of GHOST items that appear to try to open but fail. THat is, it’s as if there IS something there that’s trying to load but cannot. The system sees there should be something to display but can’t do it. WHERE ARE THEY?
How does microsoft design a system that, upon crash, IMMEDIATELY destroys your backups and every back up you had set before that? That’s almost like industrial sabotage.
I’m so disgusted I can’t even cry right now. And I’ve just lost YEARS of stored work. Cause, in each tab was opened a research project into a different area of law, with a separate project going in each tab. 600 of them. GONE.
How can I even BEGIN to reconstruct this?
Any help would be appreciated, by email if you can.
Anyone know if contacting microsoft for support is even worth it? They charge a hundred bucks whether they help or not? It’s worth a try but I don’t even know how to begin that.
Oh, and this is on top of ten inches of rain and 8ft of water in my basement and a roof leaking in places I’d never imagined possible. Yeah, it’s shi**y here.
Bernice says
Everything is working fine then one crash and 6 windows are gone. Which would be fine as it has the pop up to restore tabs that it had to close do to the crash, but of course I click on that and wait for them to load and they never do. Were they ever going to? Who knows. It’s just incredibly infuriating and not the only time it has happened just today I was just trying to do a final edit on a project of mine and all my progress is gone along with other bits and pieces. Unfortunately there is no other solution to this problem but to just get a different computer that doesn’t have Bill Gates attached to the brand as his name now leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
TL;DR: I Quit. (Microsoft)
Jean Bush says
Edge always opted me to restore previous tabs, now after the last update it no longer does that. I learned to save my tab links in my Gmail. Now I just open the gmail and click on the links to reset them. Takes time and Edge is full of crappola.
Alan says
Edge is set to restore tabs from the previous session on startup. BUT it often DOESN’T! I’ve found that playing around with it WILL find those “lost” tabs somewhere, but there’s no obvious way to do it and I didn’t record the exact steps I took to do it.
The fact that it repeatedly loses tabs is very annoying, as you can see from the previous comments here. No other browser does this. I’m switching to FireFox.
jack says
edge contantly hangs up. No way to restore my tabs. Major waste of time with POS! Off to buy an Apple computer. Adios Bill Gates and your USELESS junk!
Craig Evans says
I hate microsoft edge! One crash and bam! I’ve just lost 30 tabs and no way to restore them
kelley wilson says
MS Edge SUCKS!!!! crashes frequently, ungodly slow, fails to recover sessions. there is no add on allowed for third party to create a session restore app. MSW 10 SUCKS!!, It also ungodly slow, I5 proc and 16gb ram…. Goin back tp W 7 and Firefox !!!!!!!!!!!!
Sheldon David says
When I started my computer I click restore but the old tabs did not restore or open like it usually do. What do you think happened? Now I can’t retrive the old tabs.
Stewart Colten says
All MS needs to do is to have MS Edge save the past 10 sessions. Then very little can go wrong from which a recovery is not readily available. They refuse to do this. Very customary for MS. In designing all of their basic productivity software, they do not use their imagination as to what might go wrong. That is why we need legislation to set basic standards for productivity software sold for money or utility software intended to be used in conjunction with such productivity software.
michael says
can anyone help me i have the opposite problem edge restores the whole time the previous session when i start my pc every day and opens the edge does not start it on the home page but at the place i was the day before it only happens the first time i open my browser they subsequently open times on the homepage, how do I turn it off
Evelynn Dallas says
This doesn’t help med get the tabs that already got exited before I changed my settings.
George says
This is simply wrong. (a) It claims to tell how to restore your last session, but it does no such thing. It merely tells how to change your setting to open previous windows. (b) That setting, as others have noted, is at best unreliable.
I want to know how to actually restore the previous session when Edge fails to work as advertised. (At least that proves I’m dealing with Microsoft.) No instructions are given here.
Michael says
Like others, time to junk Edge. What garbage. Had it set to open with previous pages, and it usually did. So no need to tell me about settings. But then one fine day it decided not to. And there is no simple button to “restore session” like any other 21st century has. Edge can go to hell.
Mike says
The only way I can see to do this is to force close it down through Task Manager. Then it opens with previous tabs and a Start Afresh tab each time.
Ted says
Edge is crap. Unbelievable that this issue that’s simply not an issue with other browsers. What garbage. I’ll be switching to Chrome or Firefox, quality browsers. This crap system has caused me considerable problems. Incompetent idiots.
Joey Dubé says
“At last, someone found an actual working solution to this problem, see this question on SO (“That Marc”s answer was the easiest one that worked for me) :
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34117660/how-to-restore-session-in-microsoft-edge
The gist of it is that Edge sometimes (it seems to happen frequently after major updates at least) creates a new “session pointer”, although the previous one was not deleted and is not corrupted, it’s just no longer “pointed to”. All you have to do to restore it is to go to
%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\AC\MicrosoftEdge\User\Default\Recovery\Active
and copy the name of the newer RecoveryStore.{guid}.dat and delete the file itself, then rename the older RecoveryStore file with the name of the new one. Then open Edge and voila! your tabs should be back.
“
Pen Mann says
Yup. Edge simply WILL NOT open to Last Session with any dependability. Even if we “set aside” a set of Web pages, the whole set is NOT COPIED but moved to the desktop then, after restarting, say, the next day, BOTH the “set aside” pages are going AND the Last Session must be rebuilt. Only ONE page is reliable, namely, the “Start Page,” MAKING THE ENTIRE BROWSER TOTALLY UNRELIABLE AND FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES …. USELESS.
Mike says
Yep, same problem. One of the issues that led me to discontinue use of IE. Guess it’s time for Firefox again…
Tom from Minneapolis says
These guys are CORRECT! At least twice recently, Edge simply CRASHED, and lost ALL of my tabs.
I agree that about 90% of the time when Edge crashes, the tabs ARE restored.
BUT, today it lost dozens and dozens of tabs when it crashed. This software failure SUCKS!
Another question: Why does Edge crash so darn much???
Yan says
Lol that doesn’t work. I couldn’t remove edge, so I decided to at least put it some mundane use. So I applied the proper setting and opened up like 20 tabs I frequently use for updating… turns out it couldn’t even do that right. All my tabs are gone, and there isn’t even a way to restore the previous session. Microsoft tries so hard to make edge worth using, but it’s still crap, just more confusing interface. Screw it, I’ll just use opera.
1PissedOffMicrosoftUser says
Like Gerhard says, MS Edge does not always reopen the last open session and when it doesn’t we are on our own to try and recover what we lost. Thanks for yet one more POS software Microsoft. Why don’t you fix this for us already as the web is full of people that have this problem over and over again. That’s why I use Chrome.
John W says
“From here onwards, Edge will save the session tabs before closing and will automatically open previous session tabs when you run it.”
Except when it doesn’t and then there doesn’t appear to be a real time method of accessing previous session.
Muz says
Let me try this again. This “previous pages” does not always work for some weird reason. Microsoft is not looking into it either!
gerhard says
unfortunately does not work. Accidentally closed edge and came back to the Microsoft news page. Imagine we could avoid that :-)