SharePoint Online: Restore a Document from the Recycle Bin using PowerShell

Requirement: Recover a deleted document from the recycle bin in SharePoint Online.

How to Restore from Recycle Bin in SharePoint Online?

When you delete a document from the SharePoint Online document library, it just moves to the SharePoint Recycle Bin, similar to what happens when you delete a document on your local computer to prevent data loss. There are two stages of Recycle bins in SharePoint Online. When an item is deleted, it goes to the first-stage Recycle Bin (or end-user Recycle Bin). When you delete an item from the first-stage Recycle Bin, it is moved to the second-stage Recycle bin, which Site Collection Administrators can access. The total lifetime of deleted items is 93 days. When it reaches the retention period of 93 days, the item gets deleted permanently from the Recycle Bin (it doesn’t matter if it’s in the first or second stages). How to recover a deleted file in SharePoint Online?

To restore items from the recycle bin, follow these steps:

1. Login to your SharePoint site and click on “Site Contents”, either from the site settings icon in the top-right corner or from the quick launch menu.
2. Click on the “Recycle bin” link from the top-right area of the page. This is called the “End-user Recycle Bin”, which lists all items deleted either by you or by someone else. (As long as you have edit permission to the deleted items, you can view and restore them from here!).
3. This page lists all deleted files on the SharePoint Online site, sorted by deleted date. Select the document(s) you would like to restore and then click “Restore Selection”.

   

4. Confirm restore by clicking the “OK” button.
5. The files you selected should be available in the original location from where it was deleted.

Restore Deleted Documents from Admin Recycle bin:

As the end-user recycle bin is security trimmed, You can use the Site collection Admin recycle bin to view and restore documents deleted by end-users at the site collection level. Login to the site as a site administrator, Go to Site Settings and click on the “Recycle Bin” link under the “Site Collection Administration” section (URL shortcut: “/_layouts/15/AdminRecycleBin.aspx”) to restore deleted files.

Recover Documents from Second Stage Recycle Bin:

Documents deleted from the first stage Recycle Bin (or end-user recycle bin) don’t get deleted permanently as long as its retention time is lesser than 93 days. Instead, they are moved to the second stage, which can be accessed by the site collection administrator. It’s a good idea to empty the recycle bin if your storage quota reaches its maximum, as deleted SharePoint data occupy the site’s storage space.

Follow these steps to recover from the second-stage Recycle Bin:

1. Log in to the SharePoint Online Site as the site collection administrator.
2. Click the Settings gear icon >> Site information >> and choose “View all site settings”.
3. On the Site Settings page, click the Recycle Bin link under the Site Collection Administration section.
4. Click on the “Second-stage recycle bin” link from the bottom of the page. (URL short-cut for second Stage Recycle bin:/_layouts/15/AdminRecycleBin.aspx?view=5#view=13)
5. Select the SharePoint files you wish to restore and click “Restore.

That’s all. The deleted SharePoint file will be restored to its original place. Now, let’s see the SharePoint Online PowerShell to restore items from the recycle bin.

SharePoint Online: Restore from Recycle bin using PowerShell

In SharePoint Online, we can restore deleted files using PowerShell. E.g., let’s use PowerShell to restore all Excel files from recycle bin to their original location.

#Load SharePoint Online Assemblies
Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll"
Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll"
   
##Variables for Processing
$SiteUrl = "https://crescent.sharepoint.com/sites/Sales/"
$UserName="Salaudeen@crescent.com"

#Get the password to connect 
$Password = Read-host -assecurestring "Enter Password for $UserName"
$Credentials = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($UserName,$Password)
 
Try {    
    #Setup the context
    $Context = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($SiteUrl)
    $Context.Credentials = $Credentials
    
    #Get the Site recycle bin
    $Site = $Context.Site
    $RecycleBinItems = $Site.RecycleBin
    $Context.Load($Site)
    $Context.Load($RecycleBinItems)
    $Context.ExecuteQuery()

    #Get all Excel files from Recycle bin
    $ExcelFiles= $RecycleBinItems | Where {$_.Title -like "*.xlsx"}
    Write-Host "Total Number of Excel Files found Recycle Bin:" $ExcelFiles.Count
    
    #Restore from Recylce bin
    $ExcelFiles | ForEach-Object { $_.Restore() }
    $Context.ExecuteQuery()    
}
catch {
    write-host "Error: $($_.Exception.Message)" -foregroundcolor Red
}

Please note that the above script restores from 1st stage recycle bin (or end-user recycle bin). Instead of a Web object, you may have to use a Site object to restore from the Site collection Recycle bin (Or 2nd stage recycle bin).

SharePoint Online: Restore a File from Recycle bin using PnP PowerShell

We can also restore deleted files in SharePoint Online using PnP PowerShell. To restore items from the recycle bin, as a first step, let’s get the ID of an item to restore:

#Config Variables
$SiteURL = "https://Crescent.sharepoint.com/sites/marketing"

#Connect to PnP Online
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Credentials (Get-Credential)

#Get All Items from Recycle bin
Get-PnPRecycleBinItem -RowLimit 500000 | Select Title, ID, ItemType, Size, ItemState, DirName, DeletedByName, DeletedDateLocalFormatted | Format-table -AutoSize 

This gets you all items in the recycle bin with their IDs.

Now, you can restore the item with the ID parameter using the Restore-PnPRecycleBinItem cmdlet.

#Restore Recycle Bin Item by ID
Restore-PnPRecycleBinItem -Identity fd97143c-68fc-48ef-b148-5b6228610899 -Force

SharePoint Online: Restore bulk from recycle bin using PowerShell

If you want to restore all items from the recycle bin, use the following:

#Restore All Items from recycle bin
Get-PnPRecycleBinItem -RowLimit 500000 | Restore-PnpRecycleBinItem

Similarly, you can restore a file by its name or type. E.g., Let’s restore all documents (.docx)

Get-PnPRecycleBinItem -RowLimit 500000 | Where {$_.LeafName -like "*.docx"} | Restore-PnpRecycleBinItem -Force

Restore All Files and Folders Deleted from a Specific Library using PowerShell

What if a new file or folder with the same name was created meanwhile? Maybe the folder was recreated, and the file was re-uploaded to the original location where it was deleted. Let’s perform a check before restoring it from the recycle bin.

#Parameter
$SiteURL= "https://crescent.sharepoint.com/sites/marketing"
$DirPath = "sites/marketing/Migration"
 
#Connect to PnP Online
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Interactive

#Get the Web
$Web = Get-PnPWeb
 
#Get All Items deleted from a specific path or library - sort by most recently deleted
$DeletedItems = Get-PnPRecycleBinItem -RowLimit 500000 | Where { $_.DirName -like "$DirPath*"} | Sort-Object -Property DeletedDate -Descending

#Restore all deleted items from the given path to its original location
ForEach($Item in $DeletedItems)
{
    #Get the Original location of the deleted file
    $OriginalLocation = "/"+$Item.DirName+"/"+$Item.LeafName
    If($Item.ItemType -eq "File")
    {
        $OriginalItem = Get-PnPFile -Url $OriginalLocation -AsListItem -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    }
    Else #Folder
    {
        $OriginalItem = Get-PnPFolder -Url $OriginalLocation -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    }
    #Check if the item exists in the original location
    If($OriginalItem -eq $null)
    { 
        #Restore the item
        $Item | Restore-PnpRecycleBinItem -Force
        Write-Host "Item '$($Item.LeafName)' restored Successfully!" -f Green
    }
    Else
    {
        Write-Host "There is another file with the same name.. Skipping $($Item.LeafName)" -f Yellow
    }
}

To restore a deleted site in SharePoint Online, You have to use either PowerShell or SharePoint Admin Center. Here is my other post on restoring deleted items from recycle bin: SharePoint Online: PowerShell to Restore Deleted Items from Recycle bin