Forum Discussion
Finding the recycling bin on Microsoft word
I have had to go on a wild goose chase, to be quite frank with you, for the recycling bin on word. I was about to lock in and have my “academic comeback”, as the bairns say on social media platforms ...
Word doesn’t have its own Recycle Bin, which is why you can’t find one inside the app. Deleted documents are recovered from wherever they were stored:
- OneDrive: Sign in at https://onedrive.com/ with the account you used in Word, open Recycle bin, select the document, and choose Restore. This is the best place to start if you use Word in a browser.
- On your Windows PC: Open the desktop Recycle Bin, find the document, right-click it, and choose Restore.
- On a Mac: Open Trash, right-click the file, and choose Put Back.
If you only chose Remove from list in Word’s Recent documents, the file hasn’t been deleted—search for its name in OneDrive or on your computer.
If the document was never saved, that’s a different situation. In desktop Word on Windows, try File > Info > Manage Document > Recover Unsaved Documents. Any available recovery copy should be saved immediately.