Losing an important Excel file is always stressful for individuals and businesses. Whether it’s a financial report, sales data, attendance sheet, or years of records, one accidental delete or system crash, and your entire spreadsheet can disappear. Most of the time, the deleted Excel file ends up in the Recycle Bin, so you can easily recover deleted Excel files from there. But in some cases, it might not be present in the Recycle Bin, making it difficult for users to recover deleted Excel files.
Why Deleted Files May Not Be in the Recycle Bin?
Excel files might be permanently deleted, and there are specific reasons that files are completely erased from the system without going through the Recycle Bin. The common reasons are:
- The user pressed Shift + Delete keyboard shortcut to permanently delete a file without sending it to the Recycle Bin.
- If the file size is too big for the Recycle Bin, it will be permanently deleted.
- It was removed from an external drive or cloud, which typically do not go to the system’s Recycle Bin.
- The Recycle Bin was emptied automatically.
How to Recover Permanently Deleted Excel Files?
If your deleted files are present on your system, then only recovery with a manual method is possible. However, manual processes do not always guarantee success, leaving users in the middle of nowhere. The only possible solution in such scenarios is using a powerful Windows Data Recovery tool.
You can use the Kernel for Windows Data Recovery tool to get back your lost, deleted, or corrupt Windows items, including Excel files, without worrying about anything. The software scans the chosen drive and retrieves inaccessible and deleted data.
Features You Get For Smooth Excel File Recovery
- Easily connect and recover data from external hard drive.
- Get a detailed preview of your selected physical or logical drive before final restore.
- Recover data from unreadable SD cards including Excel files, photos, videos, etc.
- Supports all Windows versions including Windows 11, 10, and older versions.
Quick Steps to Recover Deleted Excel Files
- Launch the tool and select any recovery mode from:
- Quick scan: The quickest method to recover data. It scans for lost data after bad sectors on the hard drive.
- Deep scan: It conducts a thorough scanning, though it is a little bit slower than the Quick Scan. But it recovers data more efficiently.
- File trace: It is the most efficient scan, which performs a search quite deeply in every sector of the hard drive.
- After selecting the scanning mode, you can choose from the logical drive or physical drive depending on the location of the Excel file.
Note: Do not choose the drive where the software is installed
- Next windows will inform you of the drive you have selected, its capacity, SPC, file system, used space, and free space. Finally, click Next.
- The tool begins searching for the data; you can choose to hide the progress or even stop it at any point.
- After the search, the tool arranges all the folders in a structured tree format and lets the user see the preview of any file. Select the required Excel file and click Recover.
- Choose a location to save the recovered Excel files, and click OK.
- The software will begin the recovery process and save your files at the provided destination.
Final Verdict
Excel files contain most of the important data of any individual user or entire organization, and users can’t afford to lose it. If your file was accidentally deleted and not overwritten by new data, then only manual retrieval is possible. But for permanently deleted Excel files, only a free data recovery tool is helpful.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to retrieve deleted Excel files not in the Recycle Bin?
If your Excel files are not available in the Recycle Bin, then you will need to use a specialized Windows Data Recovery software to recover them back.
Where can I find deleted Excel files?
Check your system’s Recycle Bin (on Windows) and Trash (on Mac) to find deleted Excel files.
Can I recover a spreadsheet I accidently deleted?
Yes, you can recover accidentally deleted Excel files if they’re present on your system.
