How to Recover Deleted Documents on Windows 11/10/8/7

To save space or protect privacy, you can delete unwanted files from your PC or laptop. However, you may accidentally delete important documents and hope to get back the lost files. Today, this passage will tell you how to recover deleted documents on Windows 11/10/8/7.

Note: Methods in this post also applied to how to recover deleted documents on Word, Excel, and different file types like photos, videos, PDF, and so on.

Is it possible to recover permanently deleted files?

When you delete a file or folder by right-clicking on it and choosing “delete”, it will go to the Recle Bin on the computer. You may have emptied the Recycle Bin before you realized there are some files you don’t want to lose. So you wonder how to restore permanently deleted files from Recycle Bin. Fortunately, the permanently deleted files can be recovered if you choose the tool that best fits your requirements.

In fact, after you delete files, your computer doesn't immediately delete them completely. These files are still stored on your hard drive, but are marked as inaccessible data, waiting for new data to be written.

So if you continue to use your hard drive or system, you may never be able to recover permanently deleted files in Windows 10. Therefore, to recover permanently deleted files, you should prevent new data from being written to the hard drive.

How to recover deleted documents on Windows 11/10/8/7

Next, here are several proved ways on how to recover permanently deleted files from PC or laptop. Follow the steps below, at least one of the methods will help you get back your deleted or lost documents.

Method 1. Retrieve deleted files with file recovery Software

There is a third-party file recovery software program- MyRecover  can easily scan and recover permanently deleted files in Windows 11/10/8/7 and Windows Server with a graphical user interface. It supports to retrieve hundreds of file formats from computer hard drive and external storage devices, including HDD, SSD, SD card, USB flash drives, & more.

This tool comes with many prominent features and advantages, making it easy to recover deleted data.

❤️‍ All kinds of files types- It can recover more than 200 files types including word documents (TXT, PPT, PDF, etc.), images, videos, audios, archives and more.
😬 All data loss scenarios - No matter how you lost your data, like inadvertent deletion, disk formatting, system crash, virus attack or more, it can be of great help.
👻 Two scan ways - Quick Scan & Deep Scan helps recover your data without any omissions.
🖥️ High-speed- Recover lost data at high speed and recovery rate.

Click the icon below to download this software to recover deleted documents.

Step 1. Open MyRecover on your computer.

Step 2. Select the specific disk or partition where your lost data is located. Hover the mouse over the drive and click Scan to scan.

Step 3. Wait for a while to complete the scanning process, all the deleted data will be found and listed in the Scanned files list, select the data you want to recover and click the Recover X files option to retrieve your data.

Method 2. How to recover deleted documents from Recycle Bin

Whenever you accidentally delete data, the first thing to check is the Recycle Bin. All deleted files, should go straight to the Recycle Bin unless you make any mistake of permanently deleting them. 

Steps to recover unsaved word document from Recycle Bin

Step 1. Open the Recycle Bin by right-clicking or double-clicking on the desktop.

Step 2. Locate the deleted files or documents you want to recover, right-click and select Restore button to get them back. Or you can drag them to the desired location.

Method 3. Recover deleted documents with Previous Version feature

The operating system's "Restore Previous Version" feature can be very useful if you accidentally delete a file you've been using. Previous versions are either copies of files and folders created by Windows Backup or copies of files and folders that Windows automatically saves as part of a restore point.

You can use it if you enable File History or create restore points on your PC. Using this function, you can quickly and easily revert to a previously saved version. Follow the steps below to access this feature.

Step 1. Open Windows File Explorer, click This Computer, select the drive where your data was deleted.

Step 2. Right-click on folder and select Properties or Restore previous versions.

Step 3. Select the previous version you need and click Restore.

Method 4. Retrieve files from File History backup

File History is also a handy Windows feature. It can automatically save copies of files from your computer to an external drive, so you can recover them if they are lost, damaged or deleted. If you've enabled File History to back up your files on Windows, you can follow these steps to restore your files.

Step 1. Open the File History, you can preview all backed up folders and files from there. If you can’t find the backup you want, search it in the search box at the top of the window. For example, you can enter the path to the backed-up folder, such as C:\, and then press Enter.

Step 2. Select the files you want to restore, and then click the green button at the bottom. Or, you can click the gear icon at near the top right corner of the window, and then select Restore to from the menu to restore the files to your desired location.

Method 5. Use the Command Prompt for data recovery

The Command Prompt is a command line interpreter application on Windows, can be used to recover deleted or lost data. Sometimes your documents may be hidden, and you can find them using one of the commands- attrib.

Follow the steps: 

Step 1. Press the Win + R keys to start the Run program.

Step 2. Type the” cmd” and click OK.

Step 3. Type the command in the Window: ATTRIB -H -R -S /S /D F:*.* Note: F is the drive letter of the USB drive, you should replace it with the drive you want to recover data.

Step 4. After entering the above command, Windows will try to recover your files, and then you can find your deleted data.

Note: The filename will appear in a generic form, and it may be difficult to verify that you have recovered the desired data.

Conclusion

In this post, I introduce some methods on how to recover deleted documents/ on Widows 11/10/8/7, you can get your deleted files back effortlessly. Especially when you accidentally empty the Recycle Bin and don't want to use a complicated command prompt, you can let MyRecover help you.

Actually, backing up important files is the best way to prevent data loss. File History is an excellent backup tool for Windows, and you can set up File History to save data by following the steps provided in this article. Alternatively, you can choose AOMEI Backupper to help you back up and restore your vital files on your computer.