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GaryS123's avatar
GaryS123
Iron Contributor
Nov 10, 2025

Microsoft Lists

Just been looking into Lists in SharePoint and find its great how you can make it look and function great, very pleasing to use.  I like how you can have version history on items too and also if someone did delete the list you can restore it.  But what if you want to restore if from backup, what if someone deletes a column.  I use AvePoint backup and it doesn't show the list as a list when i restore.  It just shows a spreadsheet.  

I cannot then paste the spreadsheet into an empty list because some fields like People and multiple choice do not format correctly from the spreadsheet back into a list.

 

Is it just AvePoint or are there solutions to backup Microsoft Lists and restore them as a list.  I cannot see going forward with lists if you cannot restore from backup.

 

Thanks

Lists
microsoft lists

4 Replies

  • Rob_Elliott's avatar
    Rob_Elliott
    Bronze Contributor
    Nov 10, 2025

    If someone deletes a column you can't restore it. But why would they do that? I believe it's possible to backup & restore a list using Powershell (although I've never done it), or you could log a support ticket with Microsoft for them to restore the list for you.

    Rob
    Los Gallardos
    Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User.
    Principal Consultant, Power Platform, WSP Global (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

     

     

    • GaryS123's avatar
      GaryS123
      Iron Contributor
      Nov 10, 2025

      Why would a user delete anything lol....sorry I work in an organisation where its possible for someone to delete something and then change their mind.  Lists looks like it has now recovery options not every from a backup.  

      My point was if something happens like for instance an excel sheet becoming corrupt, you can restore it.  If a List becomes corrupt or someone deletes a column, it would be great to restore from backup as a last resort if the list is holding company data.  

      I will log a ticket with MS to see if they can do it, just seems Lists is not something to hold important data for now.

      • Rob_Elliott's avatar
        Rob_Elliott
        Bronze Contributor
        Nov 10, 2025

        I think you are over-worrying this before you've even got to grips with the product. We have business-critical data including contract & finance data in thousands of lists across the world (I'm the Power Platform Lead for a worldwide company of 73,000 staff). We've never had a problem with staff deleting columns - but make sure you control your list permissions so that only a very very small number of staff can do things like editing the site structure, deleting columns etc. And as far as I recall we've not needed to restore from a backup at any point in the last few years. 

        There are things you can do which we do for some critical lists. For example, create a flow in Power Automate to create an item in a "backup" list (we often do this on a completely different site) every time an item in the master list is created or modified. That way you always have another copy of the data.

        Rob
        Los Gallardos
        Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User.
        Principal Consultant, Power Platform, WSP Global (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

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