Dropbox: How to See Your Recently Deleted Files

To help protect you from accidentally deleting files, Windows moves files that you delete into the recycle bin. This stores recently deleted files until they are either manually deleted permanently, recovered from the recycling bin, or are automatically removed to reduce the recycling bin’s size. One of the things you may miss in a cloud service is protecting against accidental deletions.

To offer the same sort of protection, Dropbox moves all deleted items to the recently deleted folder. These files will be kept in this folder for thirty days before being permanently deleted. This is a decent timeframe to realize that you’ve deleted something important.

Tip: If you happen to be on the paid Dropbox professional tier or any other business tiers, the deleted folder will retain documents for 180 days instead.

On the right-hand side of the page, you can apply filters to the items in the list. This includes filtering within date limits, by the person’s name or email that deleted the file or by the folder the file is in.

Note: You can only restore shared files if you originally had permission to edit them. If you only had read permissions, you won’t be able to restore the file.

How to See Your Recently Deleted Files

To see your recently deleted files, browse to and sign in to the Dropbox website. In the column on the left, click on the “Recently deleted” to view your recently deleted files.

To restore a file or folder, you can click on it in the list, then select “Restore” or “Restore all” for a folder. If you move your mouse all the way to the left of an entry in the list, you can see a checkbox; you can use these checkboxes to select multiple items at once. This can be used to both restore and permanently delete the selected items.

Tip: Restoring a large number of files at once may take some time. You may have to wait for them to appear in your Dropbox again.

Dropbox’s recently deleted folder allows you to recover files that have been accidentally deleted. By following the steps in this guide, you can see and recover recently deleted items.