If you opened Microsoft Edge recently and saw a notice saying Collections is gone, you are not imagining it. Microsoft removed Collections from Edge in version 149, which started rolling out on June 4, 2026. If you did not migrate your data before updating, some of it may already be gone.
This guide explains what happened, what the two official exit options actually preserve, what they silently discard, and the best ways to replace Collections going forward.
What Was Edge Collections?
Collections launched with the Chromium-based Edge as one of its signature features. It let you save webpages, images, text snippets, and personal notes into named visual boards inside the browser. Unlike bookmarks, Collections showed thumbnail previews and let you add your own annotations. Everything synced across devices when you were signed in with a Microsoft account.
People used it for trip planning, shopping comparisons, ongoing research projects, recipe collections, and anything else that needed more structure than a flat folder of links. It was one of the few things Edge did that Chrome genuinely did not match.
Why Microsoft Removed It
Microsoft’s official explanation is that it is “simplifying Edge.” The timing tells a different story. Edge 149 also removed the Sidebar app list and replaced the Copilot button with a more prominent Chat interface. The company is clearly pushing Copilot as the organizing principle of the browser, and Collections occupied similar screen real estate.
Microsoft has not introduced a direct replacement. Copilot Journeys, which arrived around the same time, organizes your browsing history automatically but does not let you manually curate and annotate content the way Collections did.
What the Two Migration Options Actually Do
When you open Edge 149, a notice appears in the Collections panel with two buttons. Here is exactly what each one does and what it misses.
Option 1: Move to Favorites
Clicking Move to Favorites creates a new folder called CollectionsExport in your Edge Favorites. Each of your Collections becomes a sub-folder containing the saved webpage links.
What it saves: Webpage URLs, organized by Collection name.
What it permanently discards: All images you saved, all text notes and annotations, and any non-page items you clipped. If your Collections included screenshots, product images, or handwritten notes, those are gone after this migration.
Option 2: Export Your Data
Clicking Export Your Data saves a CSV file to your Documents folder. This file contains all your saved URLs, organized by Collection.
What it saves: All webpage URLs with Collection names as labels.
What it permanently discards: Same as above. Images, notes, and annotations do not appear in the CSV. The export also takes the data out of your browser entirely, so you lose the integrated experience.
Important for personal Microsoft account (MSA) users: Several users have reported that neither the one-click Favorites migration nor the CSV export option works correctly for personal MSA accounts. If you fall into this category, try the export from edge://settings/profiles/exportBrowsingData instead of from the Collections panel itself.
What to Use Instead of Collections
The honest answer is that there is no single built-in replacement inside Edge that does everything Collections did. Here are the best options depending on how you used it.
If You Used Collections for Bookmarking with Context
Edge Favorites with folders gets you 80% of the way there for pure link-saving. The missing piece is visual thumbnails and annotations. For those, the best free option right now is Raindrop.io, a browser extension and web app that saves links with previews, tags, and notes. It has a generous free tier and works in Edge, Chrome, and on mobile.
If You Used Collections for Research Projects
Notion or OneNote (which is built into Microsoft 365) can capture links, images, and notes together in one place. OneNote is already on most Windows machines and syncs through your Microsoft account, making it a natural fit for former Collections users staying in the Microsoft ecosystem.
If You Want Collections Back Inside the Browser
A developer named Rod Trent built a free, open-source browser extension called Collections that rebuilds the original feature almost exactly. It adds a side panel that looks and works like the original Collections pane, lets you save pages with one click, import the CSV that Edge exports, and backup everything as a full JSON file that preserves notes and images. It works in both Edge and Chrome. You can find it on GitHub by searching “rod-trent Collections extension.”
If You Used Collections for Shopping
Edge’s built-in Shopping features (price tracking, price comparison) are still present and handle the product-comparison use case natively. For saving wish lists across multiple stores, Pinterest or browser extensions like Honey cover the visual product-saving workflow.
How to Recover Data If You Already Updated to Edge 149
If you updated before migrating and can no longer see Collections in the panel, your page URLs may still be recoverable from your Microsoft account’s sync data.
- Go to account.microsoft.com and sign in.
- Navigate to Privacy and then Activity history.
- Check if your browsing activity is stored there. Edge syncs browsing data to your Microsoft account, and some Collections data may appear as visited URLs.
- Check bing.com/saves. Microsoft moved some Collections data to Bing Saves for MSA users during the transition. Your saved pages may be accessible there even after Edge 149 removed the Collections panel.
Images, notes, and annotations saved only inside Collections are not recoverable through these methods. That data lived locally in Edge and was not synced separately.
Good to Know
- Bing Saves (bing.com/saves) is still active and works similarly to Collections for MSA users. You can save pages there from Edge and access them on the web.
- Edge’s reading list (accessible from the Favorites panel) is a simpler but fast way to queue articles to read later, if that was your main Collections use case.
- If you manage Edge in an organization, enterprise (AAD/Entra) accounts had a working Export Your Data option. Personal MSA users had a rougher experience with both migration paths.
Collections was genuinely useful and its removal without a direct replacement is frustrating. The options above will not feel exactly the same, but between Raindrop.io, Bing Saves, and the open-source Collections extension, you can get most of what you lost back.
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