How to restore a deleted SharePoint site

Restore a deleted site in the SharePoint admin centre

Microsoft keeps deleted SharePoint sites for 93 days. After that the site and everything in it, including lists, libraries, pages and subsites, is permanently deleted. Within the window:

1. Sign in to the SharePoint admin centre with an account that has SharePoint Administrator permissions or higher
2. Open Sites then Deleted sites. You can sort and filter by Time deleted to find the right one
3. Select the one site you want to restore. The Restore button only appears when a single site is selected
4. Choose Restore and wait for the site to reappear under Active sites
5. Check permissions, sharing links, navigation and any hub site association, and tell the site owners it is back

Administrators who prefer PowerShell can use Get-SPODeletedSite to list deleted sites and Restore-SPODeletedSite to restore one. Microsoft's guidance on retention is worth remembering here: if you must keep content for a minimum period for regulatory reasons, a Microsoft 365 retention policy keeps a copy in the site's Preservation Hold library, but that is a compliance tool rather than a way to rebuild a site.

Sites connected to Microsoft 365 groups and Teams

Most modern team sites belong to a Microsoft 365 group, and every team in Microsoft Teams has one. That changes the rules:

• Restoring the site restores the group. Microsoft says restoring a site that belongs to a Microsoft 365 group restores the group and all its resources
• The group has a shorter clock. The group's other resources, such as the group mailbox and calendar, are retained for only 30 days, while the site is kept for 93
• Teams are restored through the group. Microsoft says you cannot directly restore a deleted team; you restore its Microsoft 365 group, which is soft-deleted for 30 days
• Archive rather than delete. Microsoft suggests archiving a team you no longer use, which makes it read-only and keeps it recoverable

So for a deleted team, aim to restore within 30 days. Between day 31 and day 93 you may still be able to recover the SharePoint content, but not the full team. Our Microsoft Teams backup guide explains where each kind of Teams data lives and what backups cover.

Restore a site or library to a previous version

Sometimes the site still exists but its content is wrong: files overwritten by a bad sync, a folder structure wrecked by a mistaken move, or files encrypted by ransomware through a synced folder. SharePoint has three native options:

To use Restore this library, open the library (in Teams, open the channel's Files tab and choose Open in SharePoint), select Settings, then Restore this library, pick a preset or custom date, review the activity and select Restore. Microsoft lets you undo the restore the same way. Files that were removed from the site collection recycle bin cannot be brought back by this feature.

Microsoft's ransomware guidance for SharePoint adds one more safety net: it says SharePoint retains backups of all content for 14 additional days beyond deletion, and an administrator can ask Microsoft Support for a restoration inside that window, giving the affected site URLs and the last known good time. Treat that as a last resort rather than a plan.

Restoring items, lists and libraries inside a site

Not every SharePoint loss is a whole site. For smaller problems, start with the site's own recycle bins:

• Deleted files, folders, list items and lists go to the site's recycle bin, where site members can restore their own deletions
• Items deleted from that recycle bin move to the second-stage, site collection recycle bin, which a site collection administrator can restore from
• A whole document library that was deleted cannot be brought back with Restore this library; Microsoft says to use the site's recycle bin instead
• Time limit: items are kept for 93 days in total from the original deletion, across both stages

Once something has been removed from the site collection recycle bin, whether by hand or by emptying it, Microsoft says it cannot be recovered with the library restore feature, which is one reason attackers empty recycle bins. Our Microsoft 365 recycle bin page sets out these limits alongside the ones for Exchange and Teams.

After 93 days, or when the native tools are not enough

Once a site has been permanently deleted, or the problem goes back further than version history and the 30-day library restore, only a backup can help. A SharePoint backup taken by a third-party product lets you:

• Restore a whole site collection, a single library or list, or individual files and folders
• Choose a restore point from before the problem started, even if that was months ago, within the retention you set
• Restore to an alternate location so the current site is left intact while people check the restored copy
• Recover sites deleted by an admin or an attacker, because the backup copy is held outside your tenant

Coverage of SharePoint metadata, permissions and lists varies between products, so check the detail. Our SharePoint Online backup guide covers what to include, and the provider pages for Acronis, Axcient x360Cloud, NinjaOne SaaS Backup, Redstor and Commvault set out what each vendor says it protects. Microsoft 365 Backup also covers SharePoint sites, with the trade-offs explained in Microsoft 365 native backup vs third-party backup.

If you already use Microsoft 365 Backup, its restore points for SharePoint are, according to Microsoft, taken every 10 minutes for the first two weeks and then weekly back to 52 weeks, within the recovery window set in your backup policy (3, 6, 12 or 24 months). That makes it a strong option for rolling back a damaged site, provided the policy covered the site before the problem started.

Avoiding the next deleted site

A few settings reduce how often you need any of this:

1. Limit who can delete sites and teams, and use Teams archiving for inactive teams rather than deletion
2. Keep versioning switched on in document libraries, because library restore depends on it
3. Review retention policies so they do not delete content earlier than you expect
4. Back up SharePoint with retention longer than 93 days, and include Teams-connected sites
5. Test a site restore to an alternate location at least once, so you know the steps before you need them

See the Microsoft 365 backup best practices checklist for the full list.

How we help

We can check whether your SharePoint and Teams sites are covered today, recommend a backup that suits the size and structure of your tenant, set retention with you and run a site restore test before handover. If a site has already gone, contact us and we can help you work out which of the routes above is still open to you. Pricing depends on users, data and retention, so ask us for a quote.

Contact us about SharePoint backup and restore.