The yahoo portfolio format that I had setup on my computer for 8 years changed after my computer crashed. why?

My guess is that your computer crashing had nothing to do with the change in format. On or about March 25, Yahoo made an "improvement" in the format of Finance and that is most likely the reason for your problem. As you have found out, this "improvement" is a big mistake. I know of no one that prefers it and know of no one who understands why they replaced a perfectly good and universally acceptable foprmat with this inferior one. There is a work-around. Go to the Yahoo Finance Home Page; at the bottom of the page you will find a number of country links. Click on one of them, e.g., Singapore or Canada, and it will take you to Finance in that country which still uses the previous format. I've been using Canada for a week and it's just like it was before they made this terrible change. Let's hope they realize how unpopular this change has been and that they change it back.