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What Is The Windows Recycle Bin.

The Recycle Bin in Windows 10 & Windows 11 is a temporary storage area for files and folders that you’ve deleted from your computer.

Whenever you click delete (or hit the delete key on your keyboard), Windows doesn’t completely remove the item. Instead the item is moved to the recycle bin. It will disappear from your screen, but it’s not gone from your computer.

The reason for having a Recycle Bin is simply that we make mistakes. You & I will, at some point, delete something that later we’ll realise we didn’t want to delete.

The good news is that it’ll be in the Recycle Bin.

The Windows Recycle Bin.

Anything that you delete from your computer will be moved to the Recycle Bin.

  • Temporary storage – By default the Recycle Bin will hold deleted items for 30 days. After 30 days, the item will be automatically deleted from your computer. Gone for good.
  • When the bin is full – If you delete a lot of data, you might fill the recycle bin (use up it’s allowed storage capacity). In that case it will delete the oldest items first in order to make way for newly deleted items.
  • Files are recoverable – Files & folders can easily be viewed and recovered from the Recycle Bin, provided of course, they are still in there.
  • Delete without going to to Recycle Bin – You can delete items from your computer completely, bypassing the Recycle Bin, by holding down the Shift key on your keyboard while you’re deleting an item.
  • The Windows Recycle Bin can be disabled – Although I wouldn’t recommend it, you can disable (turn off) the Recycle Bin. After that anything that’s deleted will be completely removed from your PC.

How To Recover Files From The Recycle Bin.

If you find that you’ve deleted something (a file or folder) that you wish you hadn’t deleted, check the Recycle Bin to see if it’s still there. If it is, you can recover it.

Double left click on the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop to open it.

If you can’t see the icon on your Desktop, you can search for it. Click the Start button and then type “recycle bin“.

Recycle bin icon on Windows 11 desktop.
Double left-click the Recycle Bin to open it.
Recycle Bin has been typed into the Windows search box and is indicated in the results panel.
Click Recycle Bin (App).

Related Post.

Sometimes the Recycle Bin icon will go missing from your desktop. There could be several reasons for this happening, but to get your bin back on the desktop where it belongs check out this post The Windows Recycle Bin Icon Is Missing.

Restoring A File.

Once you’re inside the bin, it works exactly the same as any other folder on your computer.

To restore a file or folder, scroll through the list and find the item you’re looking for.

When you find the one you want, left-click it once to select it, then right-click on it to open the context (options) menu.

On the menu, left-click RESTORE.

Recycle Bin folder open. Item selected. Restore indicated on context menu.
Click Restore from the options menu.

Items Restored From The Windows Recycle Bin.

Note that when you restore (recover) an item from the Windows Recycle Bin, the item will be moved from the bin and returned to the original folder from where it was deleted.

For example, if you deleted a picture from your Pictures folder and then restore that picture. It will be returned to the Pictures folder.

Recovering Images From The Recycle Bin.

By default the Windows Recycle Bin will usually show you only the filenames of deleted items. Which is fine for documents and folder etc, but so much for images .

When trying to recover a deleted image, it’s far better if you can actually see a thumbnail of the image.

To change the file view so that it shows thumbnails of images, left-click VIEW on the menu bar. Then, on the menu that opens, left-click either Medium Icons, Large Icons or Extra Large Icons.

Inside the Windows Recycle Bin folder the View option has been clicked. The options Medium, Large and Extra Large icons are marked.
To see image thumbnails, click VIEW then select either Medium, Large or Extra Large Icons.
Image thumbnails are shown.
Your images will show as thumbnails, sized appropriately as Medium, Large or Extra Large.

How To Recover An Item From The Recycle Bin To A Different Location.

When you restore (or recover) an item from the Windows Recycle Bin, by default, it will be returned to its original location. Which makes sense, you’re putting it back to where it came from.

But that’s not always a good thing. Sometimes, you won’t actually know which folder it was in when you accidentally deleted it. You could have deleted it weeks ago.

So there is another way to restore items from the bin. You can use Cut & Paste to recover any file/folder. Using Cut & Paste, you can restore the item to any folder on your computer.

To restore an item to a different location, right click on it to open the options menu.

Then, instead of clicking Restore, click Cut.

Cut is indicated on options menu.
Select the CUT option to restore a file to a different location.

Next, navigate to the folder where you’d like the item to be placed and Paste it in.

In this example, the image is Pasted (placed) on the desktop.

By restoring files or folders in this way, you can control exactly where they’re placed.

Item restored from Recycle Bin to desktop.
Paste your file wherever you want it to be.

How To Stop Deleted Files Going To The Recycle Bin.

There are going to be times when you’ll want to delete something directly, without it going into the Windows Recycle Bin.

Hold down the SHIFT key on your keyboard while you’re deleting an item. Pressing the Shift key will to tell Windows to delete the item without moving it to the Recycle Bin.

It’s also possible to disable, or turn off, the Recycle Bin so that nothing ever goes into it.

To disable the Windows Recycle Bin completely, right-click its icon on the desktop.

On the menu that opens, left-click PROPERTIES.

Recycle Bin Properties option indicated on context menu.
Select Properties from the menu.

In the Recycle Bin properties dialogue box, you can select “Don’t move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files immediately when deleted”.

That’ll effectively turn off the Recycle Bin.

"Don't move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files immediately when deleted" option indicated.
You can disable the Windows Recycle Bin if you really want to.

Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should.

I’ve included this for completeness. I’m in no way suggesting that you should disable the Recycle Bin. For me, at least, it serves an important function.

You could turn it off temporarily perhaps when deleting large numbers of sensitive files from your computer, but in general, I’d definitely keep it enabled.

Related Posts.

Summary.

Knowing how to rescue your files from the Recycle Bin can be a life saver.

We all make mistakes from time to time. Personally I wouldn’t normally recommend turning off the Recycle Bin, it’s there for a reason and most of the time it does a good job.

Remember that you can delete files and folders immediately by using the Shift key on your keyboard if you need to.

At Home Computer Course.

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