@Buettel2, you were literally 999 versions behind. During that time, the default location of the application data folder changed. So the program is now looking in an empty folder for your data.
You need to add your businesses back by importing them. To do that, you need to navigate to the old location. Don’t worry, your data is not lost. You just need to tell the program where to look for it.
This was addressed in this topic: Lost business files when updating to Manager v24.3.5.1340. (About 700 updates ago.)