@Hexler – I believe that MATLAB_Editor_State.xml merely stores the states of the various folding blocks in the code of every m-file that you have ever opened in the Editor, not just those files that are currently open.

This is brilliant! Thank you so much!
Works in R2016a and much simpler than making functions etc.

Great – thanks! This doesn’t happen to me very often, but when it does, it’s really annoying. Your script works fine in R2016a (Mac) by the way.

%parse XML file
xmlFiles    = xmlread([prefdir filesep 'MATLABDesktop.xml.prev']);
%Retrieve the "clients"
FileNodes   = xmlFiles.getElementsByTagName('Client');
%get the length of the FileNodes
nrFiles     = FileNodes.getLength;
%initialize Files
Files       = cell(nrFiles,1);
%initialize isFile
isFile      = zeros(nrFiles,1);
%Iterate over all Elements and check if it is a file.
for iNode = 0:nrFiles-1 % Java indexing.
    %Files
    Files{iNode+1} = char(FileNodes.item(iNode).getAttribute('Title'));
    %check if the "client" is a file:
    isFile(iNode+1) = exist(Files{iNode+1},'file') == 2 && ~(strcmp(Files{iNode+1},'Workspace'));
end
%remove the other files:
MyFiles = Files(find(isFile));
%open the files in the editor:
edit(MyFiles{:});

So whenever I close my editor by accident, I click on the shortcut to retrieve the files. It works in R2013a for me – I did not check other versions.

BR Michael