You may be experiencing the issue described in the following article:

https://support.mozilla.org/kb/recover-user-data-missing-after-thunderbird-update

I did see that article but I guess I'm too new to Thunderbird or dense but I cannot find the menu feature to get to the help feature and troubleshooting as described. I did manage to find my recent folders by going to folders and clicking on recent folders but still missing most of my older folders I could swear I had. Also they are no longer in alphabetical order and I have looked at everything I could find to see if I could figure it out with no luck. I am used to Outlook which was starting to be a problem with their updates but I guess it's getting to be harder to change as I get older. Maybe I try to save too much but I thought that was the purpose of not printing everything out.

Not sure what you mean. You don't see a Help menu in the menu bar, for example? Nor 3 horizontal lines at the top right of the main window, often referred to as the Hamburger menu? Or what is it exactly that you cannot find?

I did see that article but I guess I'm too new to Thunderbird or dense but I cannot find the menu feature to get to the help feature and troubleshooting as described. I did manage to find my recent folders by going to folders and clicking on recent folders but still missing most of my older folders I could swear I had. Also they are no longer in alphabetical order and I have looked at everything I could find to see if I could figure it out with no luck. I am used to Outlook which was starting to be a problem with their updates but I guess it's getting to be harder to change as I get older. Maybe I try to save too much but I thought that was the purpose of not printing everything out.