How to Recover Lost or Deleted Documents in Office 365?

Losing important documents can put us in a lot of trouble. Unfortunately, today’s digital landscape is full of threats and dangers, making security one of the most important aspects of business continuity. For businesses using Office 365 for their day-to-day tasks, the problem becomes even greater when considering the growing cybercrime rate.

Fortunately, Office 365 offers built-in security features that protect documents and ensure their availability. Office 365 is a revolutionary suite of collaboration and productivity applications, such as OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online. The risk of accidental document loss or deletion remains a concern despite the built-in security features available to users.

Because of that, businesses are acquiring third-party Office 365 total backup solutions. But as many of you are aware, tinkering with the suite’s native features gives you multiple ways to recover deleted items. This article will review these features, explain to readers how to recover deleted files, and emphasize the importance of creating a backup copy of your most important documents. Let’s begin.

Why Is Keeping Backups Essential?

Backups in Office 365 allow us to keep copies of our most important documents in case of accidental deletion, hardware malfunction, and cyber threats. Backups are considered essential for business continuity as they allow us to restore deleted files beyond the native retention periods in Microsoft 365. Microsoft users can create backup copy of such documents and ensure they have access to recoverable files.

In short, here is exactly why everyone should keep copies in Office 365:

• Prevent accidental deletion
• Prevent data corruption
• Stop malicious activities
• Stop internal threats
• Fill up retention policy gaps
• Meet legal and regulatory compliance requirements
• Version control
• Have access to quick recovery

With that out the way, let’s look at the ways to recover lost or deleted files in Office 365.

Use the Recycle Bin

Office 365’s recycle bin is a key cog in your defense against accidental document deletion as well as lost documents. If, for some reason, you accidentally delete files, they remain in the deleted items folder, which acts as a safeguard against such accidents.

The recycle bin has a retention period, which depends on your retention policies. Deleted messages, files, and documents will remain there for a period of time before being permanently deleted. These permanently deleted files are gone the moment the retention period ends.

So, ideally, you want to ensure they never do so. If you accidentally delete a file, go to the recycle bin and recover the files. Here is how to do that in OneDrive and SharePoint Online:

For OneDrive for Business: Access the Recycle Bin by navigating to the OneDrive site, clicking on “Recycle Bin” on the left-hand side. Then, select the document you want to restore and select “Recover Deleted Items.” Alternatively, click “Restore” to recover it to its original location.

For SharePoint Online: Recovering deleted documents from SharePoint follows a similar process. Go to the “Recycle Bin” on the site’s homepage, select the document, and click “Restore.”

Leverage Version History

In Office 365, version history is a valuable feature that allows you to revert to previous iterations of a document. This is particularly useful if you need to recover an earlier version due to unintended changes or data corruption. Version history is available to OneDrive and SharePoint Online. Following similar steps, you can navigate the file explorer to identify deleted files from the Recoverable Items Folder and place them back to their original location.

Here is how to do that:

For OneDrive for Business: Right-click on the document, select “Version history,” and you’ll be presented with a list of available versions. Choose the version you want to restore.

For SharePoint Online: Navigate to the document library, click on the document’s ellipsis (three dots), and select “Version history” to access and restore previous versions.

Using Deleted Items Recovery

For emails and documents stored in Exchange Online (Outlook), you can make use of the “Deleted Items” folder and “Recoverable Items” folder. We briefly mention the Deleted Items Folder. What users need to know about it is that items can still be recovered. Recovered files will be placed back to their original location. Here is how to do that:

Deleted Items: If you accidentally delete an email, check the “Deleted Items” folder first. You can restore items from here directly.

Recoverable Items: If an item is deleted from the “Deleted Items” folder, it’s moved to the “Recoverable Items” folder, where it’s retained for a specified period. You can access this folder by clicking on “Deleted Items” > “Recover items recently removed from this folder.”

Wrapping Up

Losing important Office 365 data is always a cause for concern. But Microsoft 365 comes with built-in security features and prevention mechanisms that ensure items can still be recovered even if you’ve deleted them.

Fortunately, you can do that in a few simple steps. By following this article, you know exactly how to recover lost or deleted files in Office 365.