I need help recovering data from an external hard drive to reinstalled QuickBooks 19 on new computer. I do not know how to populate the data from the external hard drive (not a back up - the hard drive from my damaged computer was salvaged) into newly do

I can share some information with recovering your data from the old hard drive to your new laptop, @DonnaGirardin.  

To help you with recovering your data from your old hard drive to your new computer, I suggest reaching out to our Technical Support team. They have the tools to guide you with recovering and restoring to new computer in a safe and secure environment. Follow the steps below on how to reach them:

1. From your QuickBooks Desktop account, click the Help menu at the top.
2. Select QuickBooks Desktop Help.
3. Provide some information about this concern in the search box.
4. Click the Contact Us link at the bottom of the window.
5. You'll now be provided with a few support options.

If you can't get into your program, you can message us outside of the QBDT. Let me show you how:

1. Go to this support link and choose QuickBooks Desktop from the dropdown menu.
2. Click on Continue. 
3. In the What can we help you with? page, provide all the necessary information and click on Continue.

You can check this article for more information about the different types of support we offer and their availability: Contact QuickBooks Desktop support.

Here's more information on how to move your company files to another folder on your computer, on and off your network, or to another computer: Move your company files to another computer. 

Let us know if you need more help with your file. I'm always here to assist. Have a wonderful day!

Thank you! This helped immensely. Turns out I should have run updates to the install of quickbooks on the new computer after installing it as it wasn't functioning properly. Once I did that, your instructions helped me get my company files up and running. Thank you again. 

Thank you for your help - Since the help option you mentioned didn't show up on my version of QuickBooks, it  led me to check for updates to Quick Books 2019, which there were many. Once they installed, the program worked better and I was able to retrieve my data.