Microsoft Teams is the place where groups of people come together to communicate and collaborate. A large part of that collaboration is document storage, sharing, and co-authoring. In Teams, files can be found on the Files tab of each channel within a team.
Did you know the Files tab is actually showing you the contents of a SharePoint folder associated with that channel?
Because Teams files are stored in SharePoint, any file deleted from a Teams channel goes to the associated SharePoint site’s Recycle Bin. We need to go to that Recycle Bin to restore the deleted file from there.
How to restore a deleted Teams file
To find the correct SharePoint site for the team in question, we first open the Files tab for the channel from which you originally deleted the file. Then choose Open in SharePoint. If you don’t see it, you may need to use the ellipsis (…) then select it as seen in the following screenshot.
Next choose Recycle Bin from the left-hand navigation menu.
Finally, select the file you deleted then choose Restore from the ribbon menu.
Idea: Add the Recycle Bin as a channel tab
If you’re part of a team that is frequently accessing the Recycle Bin, you can pin it as a tab in your channel(s). Start this by clicking the plus sign (+) to the right of your existing tabs.
Choose Website for the app (SharePoint apps won’t work for this particular idea).
Name the tab Recycle Bin, paste the URL to your site’s Recycle Bin, and click Save.
Now you can drag the new Recycle Bin tab right next to your Files tab and have them side-by-side.
