How do I Restore accidently deleted files from sharepoint

Question

I accidentally deleted some files from SharePoint, and I need to restore them. Can anyone guide me on how to restore the deleted files from SharePoint? Please let me know if any specific steps or tools need to be used for the restoration process. Thank you.

Answer 1

Hi @ Hasnain Mozaffar，

How many days has it been since your file was deleted?

Because there are two stages recycle bin in SharePoint, first-stage recycle bin and second-stage recycle bin (In SharePoint on prem, site recycle bin is first-stage recycle bin and site collection recycle bin is second-stage recycle bin).

In SharePoint Online, items are retained for 93 days from the time you delete them from their original location. They stay in the site Recycle Bin(first-stage recycle bin) the entire time, unless someone deletes them from there or empties that Recycle Bin. In that case, the items go to the site collection Recycle Bin(second-stage recycle bin), where they stay for the remainder of the 93 days unless:

• The site collection Recycle Bin exceeds its quota and starts purging the oldest items.
• The items are manually deleted by the site collection administrator from the site collection Recycle Bin

The retention time in SharePoint on-prem is 30 days.

If you cannot find the deleted files in the second-stage recycle bin (Files exceed retention time or are manually deleted), then the file is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.

Please confirm the time of your deleted files and then go to the corresponding recycle to recover the files.

This is a guide on how to recover deleted files: Restore deleted items from the site collection recycle bin  - Microsoft Support

Please select the version of SharePoint you are using, as SharePoint online is a bit different from SharePoint on-prem.

Alternatively, you can use the PowerShell command to recover deleted files.

This is a guide on how to recover deleted files by using PowerShell: Restore Deleted Items from Recycle Bin in SharePoint Using PowerShell - SharePoint Diary

Note: Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you. The sites are not controlled by Microsoft. Microsoft cannot make any representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any software or information found there. Please make sure that you completely understand the risk before retrieving any suggestions from the above link. 

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.