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I've closed a Microsoft Edge (25.10586.0.0) window that had multiple old tabs on it restored over multiple starts, while unawares that I'd minimized a single window with nothing important on it. Now if I quit edge, when I next start it with "reopen last session" it will only open the unimportant window and not the important (recently closed one).

I can try control-shift-T but it reopens only tabs specific to the remaining window's history. If I look in the history, which I cannot search, I am amazed to not see very many of the tabs I just closed. EG a Docker image for Apache Drill, some Github pages etc.

Is reopening the last closed window with all it's tabs a missing feature? This is infuriating. Is there a work around?

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    I've seen a 50+ up voted request for this in the Windows Insider Feedback app. So maybe not yet?
    – dlamblin
    Dec 31, 2015 at 20:23
  • Someone kindly notify me with a comment when Edge adds this missing feature. I've stopped using it until that day.
    – dlamblin
    Jan 17, 2017 at 20:29
  • Hey @dlamblin, you can now do this using the new Set Aside Tabs features in Edge on Windows 10.
    – Virgil Shelton
    Jun 2, 2017 at 20:30
  • @VirgilShelton But if you close a window you haven't set aside any of its tabs, so, you don't actually get to reopen them. It's odd like that.
    – dlamblin
    Jun 3, 2017 at 4:19
  • yes that's true but that's why I said it's not easy :)
    – Virgil Shelton
    Jun 5, 2017 at 16:19

2 Answers 2

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The same thing just happened to me (I had multiple windows open and accidentally closed one that had several important tabs). In a panic I searched for a way to restore the closed window, and came across this very question. From the other answer and the comments, my heart began to sink. But then I realized that they are outdated!

This is how it works in recent versions of Edge (which are based on Chromium). If you close a window containing more than 1 tab, and if you have yet to open any new tab in any other window, then you can reopen the closed window either by right-clicking on the tab area in any of the remaining open windows, or by using the keyboard shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + T as indicated in the picture below.

Reopen closed window

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  • This should be the accepted answer now. This just helped me out tremendously. Thanks!
    – Speedbird186
    Apr 9, 2021 at 13:10
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You can now do this using the new Microsoft Edge feature that ships with the Creators Update in Windows 10, it's called "Set these tabs aside".

While it's not as easy as simply clicking Exit on Chrome or Firefox you can indeed have many New Browser instances open, reboot and click Tabs You've Set Aside and successfully restore your previous browser state.

Edit:

Now with the Chromium version of Edge out, this issue is now fixed.

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    This still doesn't answer when you accidentally close a window (eg press alt+f4 when closing the wrong window)
    – neversleepz
    Aug 5, 2017 at 12:28
  • If you accidentally close Edge you should enabled Settings > Open Microsoft Edge with "Previous Pages" and you'll be protected.
    – Virgil Shelton
    Oct 14, 2017 at 4:46
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    The problem being that if you've got multiple windows open as well as tabs and you accidentally close your main window then its lost for good. You have to recreate it by painstakingly scrolling through your history to look at the various dates they were all visited.
    – neversleepz
    Oct 15, 2017 at 7:52
  • ... Even if you generally stick to one window browsing, other sites can sometimes open windows in the background (status windows, pop out chat dialog) and so closing your main window, leaves you with Edge still running, but unable to go back to that window.
    – neversleepz
    Oct 15, 2017 at 7:59
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    This doesn't answer the question.
    – Nolonar
    Jun 3, 2019 at 17:38

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