How to recover a deleted file from the Windows Recycle Bin

When a document, picture, or other file is deleted in Microsoft Windows, it's automatically sent to the Windows Recycle Bin. If you decide you don't want to delete the file, and you have not yet emptied the Recycle Bin, you can restore the deleted files to their previous location on your computer.

To recover a deleted file from the Recycle Bin, follow these steps.

1. Go to the Windows desktop, where you can see the Recycle Bin icon. If there are any files in the Recycle Bin, the icon should look like there is trash in the bin.

2. Double-click the Recycle Bin icon to open the window displaying all files in the Recycle Bin. If no files are seen, skip to the next section below.
3. To restore any of the deleted items, you can follow any of the steps below.
   
   3a. Highlight the file you want to restore, right-click the file, and select the Restore option to restore the file to the original location it was deleted.
   
   3b. Highlight the file you want to restore, right-click the file and select Cut. Next, access the location you want to move the deleted file to and click Paste.
   
   3c. Drag-and-drop the icons from the Recycle Bin to the folder you want to store the files.

Recovering files from an empty Recycle Bin

If the Recycle Bin is empty, the option to not send files to the Recycle Bin is enabled, or the Recycle Bin was emptied. In this situation, try recovering the lost files through one of the other methods mentioned on our recovering lost files page.

• How to recover missing, lost, or deleted files.