How To Recover Deleted Files In Windows 7

You can easily recover deleted files using the Windows 7 Previous Version tool. If you had been working on a document and deleted it by mistake, or if you had changed a document and accidentally saved over it, you can recover the old version in a few simple steps. For this to work, you do need to have System Restore enabled so it can automatically create restore points for you to recover the document from.

You will first need to make sure backups were being created to begin with. To make sure System Restore is enabled on your PC, right-click Computer and select Properties. Next, click the System Protection tab and then click on the drive you want to enable (Usually the C: drive) and then click OK. This will turn it on if it was off.

If System Restore is already enabled, then you have the ability to recover a previous version of a document and you can do so from the following steps below.

How To Use Previous Versions in Windows 7

To recover a the previous version of a changed document in Windows 7, open the folder where the file had been stored and then right-click anywhere in open space. Next, select Properties and click OK.

The Properties screen of that folder will have multiple tabs across the top. Click the Previous Version tab.

You will then see numerous versions of changed and deleted files in that folder based on the restore points that were automatically created by Windows. Select the version time and date you want to revert the document back to and then click Open.

You will then see the previous versions of all of files in that folder based on the time and date you selected. You can now recover any of those files by right-clicking the file and selecting Send to and then by choosing the folder you want to save it to. In the example above, we are recovering a deleted file from the My Documents folder and returning it back to the same Documents library.

As you can see, the deleted document is back in the Documents library where it had accidentally been deleted from. This was all possible because System Restore had automatically taken a snapshot of my files and I was able to recover deleted files using Previous Version in Windows 7.