Google Sheets is more than a digital spreadsheet. It’s where we organize data, track project, and collaborate with teams in real time. With so much important information stored in a single sheet, whenever we accidentally delete the file, it would be terrifying. Worse yet, it’s been more than 30 days, and the file is no longer in the Trash. Can we still recover?
Here’s the good news: we can. In this post, we’ll walk you through proven methods to recover deleted Google Sheets, even if they’ve gone from your Trash for more than 30 days. Time is ticking, now let’s find out how.
Table of Contents
- 2 Types of Deleted Google Sheets
- How to Recover Deleted Google Sheets within 30 Days?
- How to Recover Permanently Deleted Google Sheets after 30 Days?
- Bonus: How to Recover A Deleted Sheet in Google Sheets?
2 Types of Deleted Google Sheets
There are 2 types of deleted Google Sheets files: recently deleted and permanently deleted.
Recently deleted Google Sheets files are those have been deleted within 30 days since the deletion. When you delete a Google Sheet, it doesn’t disappear immediately, it’s just moved to the Trash folder in Google Drive and will be kept there for 30 days. After 30 days, the trashed sheets will be gone from Google Drive trash. The 30-day countdown starts from the moment the file is deleted.
Permanently deleted sheets are those that have been manually removed from the Trash folder in Google Drive or have exceeded the 30-day limit in the Trash and been deleted automatically. Users won’t be able to find the files in Google Drive anymore and the recovering becomes much more challenging than those of recently deleted ones, but still possible, via Google built in feature, support or a backup.
How to Recover Deleted Google Sheets within 30 Days?
If your sheets has been deleted for less than 30 days, the recovery is easy. You just need to get the file back from Trash folder in Google Drive, because the files you deleted from Google Sheets are rendered there for 30 days.
Reminder: Google Sheets doesn’t have a Trash folder.
- Log into your Google Drive.
- Go to Trash, click on the 3-dot icon from the file thumbnail and choose Restore.
- Go to Google Sheets, you will find the restored sheets appear from the list.
How to Recover Permanently Deleted Google Sheets after 30 Days?
Notes: For deleted Google Sheets that you removed from Trash folder manually, but within 25 days since the deletion, as long as you are the owner of the Google Sheets files, Google allows a file recovery request and will search the deleted files in your account via its robot.
- Go to https://support.google.com/drive/answer/1716222, click on Request file recovery.
- Fill out the request form and submit.
- Check your Google Drive or mailbox to know if the file is restored or not.
While for permanently deleted Google Sheets after 30 days, it becomes more challenging to recover, but it is possible. Why? Because Google provides excellent tools to backup our files in Google Drive or other apps, and such a backup will help rescue the deleted files. In addition, Google Workspace users can contact the administrator to enjoy a premium recovery service. Even, when you upload the sheets from a local drive to Google Drive, or download the file to a local disk, a backup is created, even though you’ve deleted the copies from the local disk, there is data recovery program exclusively designed for this. Therefore, in this part, we will look at 3 ways to recover a permanently deleted Google Sheets file after 30 days.
Method 1. Via Google Takeout
Google services allow users to have a great control over their data within its ecosystem, to give users the peace of mind on safeguarding their data outside its system as well, Google also provides the Takeout project to export the data across Google services to a local device. These include data from Google Drive, Contacts, Google Photos, Mail, Maps, etc. For the reason that all the Google Sheets will be saved in Google Drive, so Google Takeout exports Google Sheets too.
If you have created an export via Google Takeout before deleting the Google Sheets, you can follow this process to recover a permanently deleted Google Sheets.
- Log into your Google Account.
- Then go to https://takeout.google.com/.
- Click on Manage export.
- Select an export and click Download button.
- Open the Google Takeout archive and check the Google Sheets file you want to recover.
Method 2. Use 3rd Party Data Recovery Program
Maybe you once exported the data via Google Takeout to a local disk, but later permanently deleted. Or you had a copy of the deleted Google sheets on your local disk before, and deleted some days ago. Don’t worry, the deleted files just become invisible in your system, but still on your device. Wiping a deleted file out from your device takes some time, until they are overwritten by new data. Now, use a professional data recovery program to restore the deleted sheets as soon as possible.
Cisdem Data Recovery is a trustworthy program designed to recover lost, deleted, unsaved and corrupted files from both internal and external storage devices, which is available on macOS and Windows. It has a user friendly interface and several modules work under different scenarios (hard disk recovery, SD Card recovery, NAS & Linux recovery, RAID recovery and crashed PC recovery).
More than 1000 types of files can be restored by this tool, including photos, videos, audio, documents, emails, bookmarks, archive, etc. And most importantly, it delivers a higher recovery rate, looking deeply into your device and bring the most files back to a safe location.
You can follow these steps to recover a permanently deleted Google Sheets with Cisdem:
- Visit official website of Cisdem Data Recovery, download and install the program on your computer.
- Choose the disk where you once saved the copies of the deleted Google Sheets files, then click Search for Lost Data.
- Go to Type > Documents > XLSX or XLS, all the recoverable Google Sheets files will be displayed here.
- Double click on the file to Preview, then select and click Recover button.
Tips: Cisdem also auto repairs damaged Google Sheets during the previewing process. The repair feature also works on videos, photos and other documents.
Method 3. Contact Workspace Administrator
If you are using a Google Workspace account, the subscription-based service provided by Google, with enhanced features, custom support and administrative controls. You can contact the Workspace administrator in your account to recover a deleted file, including Google Sheets.
Bonus: How to Recover A Deleted Sheet in Google Sheets
It is also a common occurrence to delete a sheet in Google Sheets by mistake, to all of us. We have 2 options to recover the files.
Option 1: Undo
By clicking Undo from Edit menu in Google Sheets, users can recover the deleted sheet easily.
- Open the file in Google Sheets.
- Go to Edit > Undo, the deleted sheet will be back.
Option 2: Restore Previous Version
Google Sheets saves all version of your files, so you can check the version history and compare the differences, also restore a wanted version as you like.
- Open the file in Google Sheets.
- Go to File > Version history > See version history.
- Select the version that contains the deleted sheet, click on the 3-dot icon and choose Restore this version.
Conclusion
Overall, there are multiple ways to recover deleted Google Sheets, even if they’ve been permanently deleted after 30 days. No matter which situation you are in, you should act quickly. And to relieve you from losing files in Google ecosystem, you are recommended to make use of its Takeout to export important data to a local disk.
