SharePoint List - Tracking Deleted Items

Copper Contributor

We have a SharePoint list that we use to track items, however I'm having a hard time tracking what gets deleted and tracing it back.

 

When an item is deleted, it goes to the recycling bin, but the recycling bin doesn't provide enough information to know what was deleted (it only has date, deleted by, created by, and original location). So if I restore the item, I don't have enough information to know which one had been deleted before without going to the "deleted by" user and asking him/her.

 

Is there a way to add more columns to the recycling bin or get more information on a deleted item? I've also tried using a Power Automate flow to trigger an e-mail when an item is deleted, but it also doesn't have the option to include more info than the above.

 

Alternatively, can you disable users from deleting items (but still allow them to edit, etc.)?

4 Replies

@jwa33 

 

Can you elaborate more  on "get more information"? what details do you need from deleted items from recycle bin?

We have about 15-20 columns of data in the original list and there are a few of those that have a unique identifier that if you could access that in the recycling bin you could see which item was deleted. Alternatively, if you could move the deleted item to a new list or something, then we could see which was deleted.

As a last-ditch effort, we could download the original list, restore the item, and then download the list again and compare.

@jwa33 

I have the same issue, but it doesn't look like any solutions were offered?  If an item in a list is accidentally deleted, but you don't know when or what, it makes finding it very difficult.  I could just restore everything that's been deleted from said list, but there's no way of telling which items have been restored.  I appreciate there may be challenges with being able to amend the view in the recycle bin - lots of custom columns for different lists, etc - but even if you could view the item before restoring it, in my situation that would be a big help.

@Todde2Shoes 

 

Yeah, no solution was offered that we could find. Even knowing the item ID in the recycling bin (the key) would help.