How to Recover Deleted Folders in Office 365

Updated On - October 23, 2024 by Nasir Khan | Reading Time: 6 minutes

In today’s world, Microsoft Office is among the most widely used programmes. Nearly 1.5 billion individuals around the world use this app. Microsoft’s Office 365 service is a subset of the larger Office suite. It’s a subscription service that you access through the cloud. Also, its central functionality is identical to that of the classic Office suite. Additionally, it can restore Office 365 folders that have been accidentally erased. This article explores various methods to recover deleted folders in Office 365. Let’s look at why it’s possible to retrieve lost data from Office 365.

Importance of Data Backup and Recovery

Data is a critical asset for any organization, and losing important data can have severe consequences, such as lost productivity, legal and financial penalties, and damage to the organization’s reputation. To mitigate these risks, it is essential to have a robust data backup and recovery strategy in place.

Data backup involves creating copies of important files and storing them in a secure location to protect against accidental deletion, hardware failure, natural disasters, or cyber-attacks. Data recovery, on the other hand, involves restoring lost or damaged data from backups to minimize the impact of data loss.

Possible Reasons to Recover Deleted Folders in Microsoft 365

Emails sent and received with Office 365 are known to be safe and sound. On the other hand, this does not guarantee that mailbox folders cannot be accidentally deleted. Folders become erased by accident, users have to delete messages from their Inboxes for various reasons, and you inadvertently delete messages you want to save. In several scenarios, users may need to access previously deleted files in Office 365.

The aforementioned are typical explanations that suggest we are familiar with how deleted files in Office 365 might be recovered.

Overview of Office 365’s Deleted Items Folder and Retention Policies

Office 365 provides several features for data backup and recovery, including the Deleted Items folder and retention policies. The Deleted Items folder is a temporary holding area for deleted items, including folders, emails, and other items. Items in the Deleted Items folder can be restored if needed, but they are permanently deleted after a specified period, usually 30 days.

Retention policies allow organizations to retain important data for a specified period, even if it is deleted by users. Retention policies can be set for specific types of data, such as emails or documents, and can be customized to meet specific business requirements.

Methods to Recover Deleted Folders in Office 365

Office 365 has three different ways to recover accidentally deleted files. The first option involves retrieving lost data from the Item folder in the user’s home directory. The next step is using the system’s native recovery tools to return the lost data. Finally, there’s the option where the user must get in touch with the Admin to employ eDiscovery to retrieve lost data.

• The first step is to retrieve the lost folders from the Trash.
• You can use the Admin console to get the files.
• You can get your files back by accessing the Recoverable Items folder.

Method1: Use the Office 365 Deleted Items folders to recover deleted items

Users may usually get back their lost Office 365 folders. If a user deletes a folder or file by accident, they can quickly get it back by following these instructions.

• Launch Office 365 and navigate to the Menu option.
• Now click on Outlook from the menu option.
• Afterwards, choose Deleted Items from the sub-menu that appears on the left.
• Then, look through your Deleted Items folders and select the message you’d like to bring back.
• Pick the desired message, right-click it, and select “Restore” or “Move to”> “Inbox” to bring it back.
• Finally, your trashed mail is being restored to your inbox.

Method2: Use the Recoverable Item option to retrieve lost Office 365 folders

The directories are sometimes erased entirely or hard deleted (Shift+Delete). After that, users must take the following actions to get them back:

• Open Office 365 and navigate to Outlook and select “Deleted Items.”
• Next, select the Recover deleted items from folders.
• Afterwards, go through the folders labelled “Recoverable Items” and pick the files you want to recover.
• To restore the selected emails, right-click on them and choose the Restore option.
• Now the selected items will be visible in Inbox.

The files can be retrieved from the Recoverable Items folder after the above procedures have been carried out.

Solution 3: Use the Office 365 Admin Console to Recover Deleted Folders

If the user cannot restore the missing folder in Outlook, they can try restoring it via the Deleted Item or Restored Item menus. After that, customers can do it instantly through the eDiscover exchange platform (Users must be Worldwide Executive of office 365). Suppose the specified folders do not appear in either the Deleted Items or Restored things lists. In that case, you will need to contact the system administrator to have the deleted or restored items restored.

To retrieve the lost folders from Admin using eDiscovery, please follow these directions:

Note: Make sure you’ve sufficient Office 365 admin permissions.

Phase1: Export Office 365 mailbox to PST

• Start by navigating the Office 365 account’s App view and selecting the Admin App.
• From the left-hand menu, choose Admin centre; then, under Security, select other settings.
• Select “eDiscovery Manager” under “Permissions” 3.
• After that, select edit > eDiscovery admin group > add a user.
• Log out and back in to see the update take effect.
• When you’ve finished customizing your account to your liking, head to Search, then Content Search.
• Activate a brand new search by clicking the “search” button.
• User conditions are displayed in a variety of ways. To further refine your search, pick Add Conditions, and then use the Modify option to select the users and groups you want to search.
• To include the name and description of your searched user, choose the Save & Run choices.
• The results of your Search will appear once you refresh the search window; at this point, you can choose to Search and go to the Export report section.
• Now click on the Generate Report option.
• Select the previously created Search in the following wizard and click on the Download Report option.
• After you have your export key copied, launch the eDiscovery Export Tool and navigate to the location where you wish to store your PST files by clicking the “Save” button.
• After deciding where to store the PST file, click the download button.

Open the PST files you downloaded in your Inbox in the previous step.

Phase2: Import PST to Outlook

For PST file conversion, users will need the desktop version of Outlook. To open and export your Outlook data, pursue the following process:

• Open your desktop Outlook application and go to the File tab.
• Now select the Open&Export option and click on Import/Export.
• Choose Import from another program or file option.
• Following, choose the Outlook data file .pst option and browse the previously created PST file.
• Use the required option as desired and click Finish.

Risks Associated with the Previously Described Approach

Some problems we ran into when employing the above-described strategy are detailed below. Read on if you need to get back some lost Office 365 folders.

• Recovered files and emails will be in the Inbox rather than their previous folder structure.
• You can recover deleted items within 14-days.
• If you keep your messages for 30 days in your online exchange mailbox. You should see folders among the recovered objects. However, if a folder is empty, it is permanently gone.
• One single item from the folder can be recovered at a time.
• To lengthen the period over which objects can be recovered. The mailbox folder must be placed on an in-place or litigation hold.
• eDiscovery’s reconstructed Deleted Items will not appear in their original folder structures. You will need to Export them to a PST file and then Import them into the mailboxes.
• To use eDiscovery to recover a previously deleted Item. Users must download the desktop version of Outlook.
• It is intended that the procedure take some time.
• The Office 365 recycle bin counts toward the 50 GB storage limit.

After Acquiring an awareness of the flaws in the aforementioned folder recovery method, users must employ a third-party application.

Regularly Backing up Important Data

While Office 365’s built-in backup features are useful, they may not provide the level of protection and flexibility that some organizations require. It is important to regularly back up critical data to a secure offsite location to protect against more significant risks such as cyberattacks, ransomware, and hardware failures.

Regain Office 365 backup solution is a robust and reliable solution for backing up critical data in Office 365. It provides automated and continuous backups of critical data, allowing organizations to recover quickly from any data loss event. With Regain Office 365 backup solution, organizations can create multiple backups of their data, schedule backups at specific times, and retain backups for as long as they need.

Recover Deleted Folders in Office 365 Using Regain Office 365 Backup tool

If the methods mentioned above are insufficient to meet the user’s needs, they will be forced to use Office 365 Backup Software to recover the deleted folders. In addition, Regain Office 365 backup software allows you to retrieve lost data from folders and save it in a wide variety of file types, this tool can save Office 365 to PST, MSG, MBOX, HTML, EML and so on.

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Conclusion

It’s common knowledge that Office 365 improves productivity by providing access to more useful features. In other cases, users will need to learn how to restore a lost Office 365 folder. Now we have a better idea of why this would be the case. This article covers the procedure that will allow us to recover or back up the trashed folders in Office 365. And being aware of Third-Party Tools that offer options for retrieving the stored data is also helpful.