Restore Recycle Bin Items Of SharePoint Online Using PowerShell

Vinit Kumar

7 Comments

Join the conversation! Your thoughts help the community grow.

Ferdie Botha5y ago
This is excellent! How to specify additional parameter of date range for the files to be recovered please?
- Arul Bretto Kum Abrham4y ago
  Can you try this below code: $frmDate=get-date("08/21/2020") $toDate=get-date("12/01/2022") $weburl="https://abc.sharepoint.com/sites/test1" $connection=Connect-PnPOnline -Url $weburl -Interactive Get-PnPRecycleBinItem | ? { ($_.DeletedDate -gt $frmDate -and $_.DeletedDate -lt $toDate) -and ($_.DeletedByEmail -eq '[email protected]')} | Restore-PnpRecycleBinItem -Force
Vinodh Narayanan6y ago
Good one. But format the ps script in editor before post your blog 😊
- Vinit Kumar6y ago
  Thanks vinodh.will take care of it.
Roshan Rathod6y ago
good one..keep it up sir
Sandeep Mishra6y ago
Very Useful
- Vinit Kumar6y ago
  Thanks Sandeep. Hoping SharePoint Admins will get benefit of this small PowerShell Script

In this blog, I will demonstrate how to restore items from the recycle bin of the SharePoint Online Site using SharePoint PnP PowerShell Script.

In my scenario a specific user has deleted 2000 files by mistake. The user was not ready to restore the files from the Recycle Bin. Instead they asked the SharePoint Online Support team to do the Job. Restoring individual files deleted by a specific user might take some effort so we have come up with a PowerShell script solution.

Pre-requisites( Environment Details)

Windows PowerShell
SharePointPnpPowerShellOnline Module

Please install the SharePointPnpPowerShellOnline module if it’s not already present using the below command.

Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline

SharePoint Recycle Bin

Variables Explanations in this blog

$O365ServiceAccount="[email protected]"# Your Service Account Name
$O365ServiceAccountPwd="Test123$"#Your Service Account Password
$SharePointSiteURL="https://abc.sharepoint.com/sites/Test" # Change this SharePoint Site URL
$UserEmailWhoDeletedFiles="[email protected]" # Change the User Email who deleted Files

Here you can see we have provided the password in Plain text which you need to provide if you would want this PowerShell script to run automatically through a Timer Job or Scheduler.

For Manual Execution please use Get-Credential command to read the User Name and Password from the user input.

Connect to SharePoint Online

Before Restoring the Files to SharePoint Online you should be connecting to the SharePoint Site using the below Snippet.

[SecureString]$SecurePass = ConvertTo-SecureString $O365ServiceAccountPwd -AsPlainText -Force
[System.Management.Automation.PSCredential]$PSCredentials = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($O365ServiceAccount, $SecurePass)
#Connecting to SharePoint Online site
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SharePointSiteURL -Credentials $PSCredentials

Get Recycle Bin Items Deleted by User

We have to get all items from the Recycle Bin using the Get-PnPRecycleBinItem command of PowerShell as a code snippet below.

$items= Get-PnPRecycleBinItem | ? -Property DeletedByEmail -EQ $UserEmailWhoDeletedFiles

The above code will get all Recycle bin items deleted by the user since we have applied a Filter with Property “DeletedByEmail” and stored into the $items variable.

Now apply For Each to read all the items one by one in the below snippet

$items= Get-PnPRecycleBinItem | ? -Property DeletedByEmail -EQ $UserEmailWhoDeletedFiles
foreach($item in $items)
{
}

You can use other Properties to filter like DeletedDate, ItemType, LeafName, DirName etc. As an example get all the List Items only from Recycle Bin as below:

$items= Get-PnPRecycleBinItem | ? -Property ItemType -EQ “ListItem”

Restore items from Recycle Bin

SharePointPnpPowerShellOnline Module of PowerShell has made a developer's life easier. To restore an Item or file from Recycle Bin use the code snippet as below.

Please find all the parameters associated with Restore-PnpRecycleBinItem

Restore-PnpRecycleBinItem -Identity $item -Force

Here I have applied -Force command so every Item restore does not ask you for Confirmation.

Complete PowerShell Script

#Powershell script to get Files from SharePoint Online Document Library and Restore them
#Created By: Vinit Kumar
# Variable - Change the parameter as it need
$O365ServiceAccount = "[email protected]"
# Your Service Account Name
$O365ServiceAccountPwd = "Test123$"
#Your Service Account Password
$SharePointSiteURL = "https://abc.sharepoint.com/sites/Test"
# Change this SharePoint Site URL
$UserEmailWhoDeletedFiles = "[email protected]"
# Change the User Name who deleted Files
#Ends[SecureString] $SecurePass = ConvertTo - SecureString $O365ServiceAccountPwd - AsPlainText - Force[System.Management.Automation.PSCredential] $PSCredentials = New - Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($O365ServiceAccount, $SecurePass)
#Connecting to SharePointDocumentationCentre site
Connect - PnPOnline - Url $SharePointSiteURL - Credentials $PSCredentials
#Get all items Deleted by UserEmail Address
$items = Get - PnPRecycleBinItem | ? -Property DeletedByEmail - EQ $UserEmailWhoDeletedFiles
foreach($item in $items) {
Restore - PnpRecycleBinItem - Identity $item - Force
}

Restored Items deleted by user

You can see in the below image three Image files got restored to the Destination site

In this blog, we have talked about how to Get the Recycle Bin items, apply a filter on those items and restore using SharePoint Online PnP PowerShell Script. I hope this blog helps some SharePoint support person with easy restoration of files.