A folder that was there yesterday is not there today, and someone is already saying the word deleted. Before anyone panics: nine times out of ten it has not been deleted at all. It has been dragged into a neighbouring folder by accident. One slightly long mouse click in a crowded file list is all it takes, and the person who did it almost never notices.

Try this first

1. Search by name, starting from the top. In SharePoint or Teams, open the document library and use the search box at the top of the page. Make sure it is set to search this library or this site rather than everything. In File Explorer, click the top-level synced folder first, then type part of the folder name into the search box at the top right. Search from the top of the tree, not from where you expect the folder to be.
2. Look at the folders immediately above and below where it used to sit. A dragged folder does not travel far. It lands in whichever folder the mouse happened to be hovering over, which is almost always an alphabetical neighbour of where it started.
3. Sort the library by Modified, newest first. In SharePoint, click the word Modified at the top of the column. A folder that was moved or renamed today jumps straight to the top of the list, along with whichever folder it was dropped into.
4. Check the recycle bin. In SharePoint, open the site, then click Recycle bin in the menu down the left-hand side. If you are in Teams, click the three dots next to the channel name and choose Open in SharePoint first. Tick the item and click Restore. It goes back exactly where it came from, with everything inside it.
5. Check the second-stage recycle bin. At the bottom of the recycle bin page there is a small link that says something like Can’t find what you’re looking for? Check the second-stage recycle bin. Anything emptied out of the first bin lands there. Not everyone has permission to see it, so if the link is missing or the page will not open, that is a job for us rather than a sign the folder is gone.
6. Ask the two or three people who work in that area. Not to find the culprit, just to jog a memory. Very often someone reorganised on Friday afternoon with the best of intentions.

If that didn’t fix it

Log a ticket and tell us the folder’s name, roughly where it used to sit, and the last day you are sure it was there. SharePoint keeps a full activity log, so we can usually see exactly who moved or deleted it, when, and where it went. That log exists so files can be recovered, not to catch anyone out. In practice we tell you where the folder is and that is the end of it.

If it genuinely was deleted, deleted items sit in the site recycle bin for 93 days by default, and then in the second-stage bin, so there is normally plenty of time. There is also a library-wide option we can use to roll a whole document library back to how it looked at a point in the recent past, which is the right tool when someone has moved dozens of folders at once rather than one.

This is a routine recovery, and we do several a month. It is not a disaster, and it does not mean anything is wrong with your system.

How to stop it happening again

Two things help. First, if a set of top-level folders matters to the whole business, ask us to set the library so that only a couple of people can move or rename them. Everyone else can still create, edit and save normally. Second, tell us before a big reorganisation rather than after, so we can take a checkpoint first and put it back in minutes if it does not work out.

Still stuck?

Log a ticket at portal.yougrowit.com.au or email support@yougrowit.com.au. If it is stopping you working right now, call 03 9028 4358.

Support hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm Melbourne time, excluding Victorian public holidays.