cannot see private pages even as administrator or editor

Good morning. I have a problem whose solutions seem obvious to the experienced, but which remains opaque to me as a newbie.

I am experimenting with setting some pages, and possibly some posts Private, so I can restrict their viewing to only those people who are registered as an editor or administrator.

My problem is that once “Private” is set, these test pages are invisible to everyone, including me as administrator, and my test administrators and editors. They don’t show up in the menu, for example, even though I’ve tested with both users logged in. This is true in both Chrome and Firefox.

I know the URL, and so I can type that into the browser, and the page displays just fine, but that’s the only way I can access these test pages so far.

I’ve read all kinds of advice from other forum users here, some of it clearly from beings who are obviously superior life forms, but I’ve not found a reply that cleanly spells out a solution to this problem.

Thanks!

Addendum: I can see the pages when I go in to Edit Pages or Posts, and I can see them when I use the View Page link or Preview Changes link.