After following the steps on this post and watching numerous videos what I'm getting at is I need to replace the "test" wallet.dat file with the backed up wallet I am trying to access. After I do this however, when I click file>open wallet>, I only see "test" and not the other wallet.
That's normal since you just replaced the wallet.dat inside it.
This is why I'd suggested to rename the copy of the old wallet.dat and paste it inside the 'wallets' folder so Bitcoin Core would recognize both wallets when using the 'load wallet' menu.
Bitcoin-qt will be able to recognize renamed wallet.dat and 'folders with wallet.dat' in that folder using 'Open Wallet' menu.
Replacing the wallet.dat was good for the old version when the multi-wallet wasn't supported, now Bitcoin Core can handle multiple wallets at the same time.
One of the biggest issues I was having is after downloading bitcoin core, without even running the program, I am looking at the folders and I don't see a folder for the wallet. On my last attempt, The folder didn't appear until after I ran bitcoin core and clicked create wallet and named it "test".
This is also normal because Bitcoin Core will no create the data directory after being installed.
For the wallets folder, it will be created once you've created the first wallet.
It seems like you're watching some quite old video tutorials when Bitcoin Core automatically creates a "
default wallet" when started the first time.
By the way, the
dumpwallet command in my post above can be used even without downloading the blockchain.
You can immediately export the keys and addresses right after loading the wallet.dat.