Applications not being displayed in the Menu.

[Danny4114]

I installed Sparky Linux 7.1 (Mate DE, I think) onto my 8 year old laptop last night. All seemed to go well and it booted up fine. However, today when I booted it up, the Applications section of the Menu is appearing as empty. Installed apps are not being displayed there. I tried to manually create a new menu and selected all the apps to be displayed in the Applications section, but it just shows up as empty. When I click on the Favorites tab, some of the installed apps show up, but the Applications tab remains empty.

Not even sure where to begin troubleshooting this issue since I am new to Linux-based operating systems.