Naming a folder and a OneNote notebook the same thing?

[Deleted]

I have a user who reported that he cannot see a folder in a document library that he previously had been using. I also could not see it, but when accessing the site through Content and Structure the folder did exist. It's also possible to access the folder by directly typing in the URL. I directed the end user to that URL but he said he didn't find the documents he was expecting to see.

I believe what happened is that he had documents in a location like "InfoSec/RiskManagement/something.pdf"

Then he created a Notebook in the same location - "InfoSec/RiskManagement"

I recently discovered that OneNote creates a hidden folder with the same name as the notebook, which in this case may have overwritten the previous folder and its contents.

My question is this - is there anyway to recover those files? Nothing appears in the recycle bin and auditing was not enabled during the time to see what may have happened to them.

[#2]

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/how-to-recover-missing-deleted-or-corrupted-items-in-sharep...

Start with the link above... sounds like going through the version history or maybe the 2nd stage (Site Collection Recycle Bin) might be the next steps for your recovery options.

[#3]

Unfortunately the documents do not appear in the recycle bin (even though there are newer and older items than the suspected time the problem occurred) and there is nothing in our second stage recycle bin. I also can't obtain a version history for the items that I can't see.

It's starting to look like these items may be unrecoverable.

[#4]

If you have SharePoint Admin Center access you could open a ticket and see what other options they might be able to help you with in the O365 Admin upper level area.

2nd note of significance - turn on a retention policy for SharePoint Online and OneDrive files. Basically when you turn on retention it will soft delete when those transactions occur. Then you may be able still access the file using the eDiscovery features behind the scenes and recover files if another situation like this occurs.