I had this question after viewing
Dual monitors; open apps on #2 only.
I came back to this question to find out how to recover my missing desktop icons but discovered that only part of the exchange gets saved so can't find the answer I was looking for.
Today, when I started my computer all the icon on my #2 monitor's desktop were gone and all the icons on my #1's monitor were on the #2 monitor! I want to recover the icons that were on my #2 monitor.
I was told in this posting to copy the icons from a folder but I don't remember what the folder was called or where I can find it.
What happened was MOST of the desktop icons on my #2 monitor went missing, only 4 out of 20 remain. There were none on my #1 monitor, I forgot, I'd moved them all onto the #2 monitor earlier in the week.