snhawaii said

There is some kind of glitch going on with Firefox because a Gmail setting also won't work with it whereas it does in IE. But everything else seems OK except the downloads. It's as if all the files have been grayed out. They don't respond to a double click or to the open option on right click.

May be you have renamed/deleted/moved your previous download folders or files. That's why those options are greyed out.

I appreciate the willingness to help very much! But I didn't do any of those things. One day everything was working fine and the next day, it wasn't. I just tried on a different laptop, and it didn't work there, either, so it's definitely something with Firefox.

Do you have "Open containing folder" if you right-click an entry in the Downloads Manager?

If not then your anti-virus software or other security or cleanup software may have removed the file.

Thank you. Yours is the first answer that seems truly helpful. But it's a little scary, too, because you must be correct. I right-clicked and the "open containing folder" option was grayed out. It only allows me to remove from history, copy download link, or clear downloads.

Before I go and do anything dumb, can you tell me what happens if I click on "copy download link"? Is that a way to avoid losing these downloaded items?

Open your virus protection. Check the log file and the quarantine folder.

snhawaii said

what happens if I click on "copy download link"?

The link is copied to your clipboard. You can then paste it anywhere.

I searched and searched trying to find where the Clipboard viewer was in Win 7 and never did find an answer. However, I just right clicked on an item and pasted it into a Word doc and then copied that into the URL box and voila! Just hit return and the item opened again. This time I clicked to save it instead of just opening, so I have a backup in Windows, too.

I wouldn't have thought of something so simple without being told about the Clipboard. All good.

Great to hear. Good work.

Windows does not have a viewer for the clipboard as such, except to paste the current. However there are third party programs that can let you view or even save entries made to use later.

If "Open" and "Open Containing Folder" in the right-click context menu in the Download Manager window are grayed then that means that the file is not in the original download location and they may have been removed by Anti-virus or cleanup software.

Nice to have this sort of help. It makes life a lot easier. Thanks.