Drupal: Recover Deleted Content

You may be able to use the Trash module to recover content that was deleted on your Drupal site within the last 30 days. 

In this article:

• Trash Overview
• Permissions
  • Drupal Lite
    • Content Contributors
    • Site Owners
  • Drupal Enterprise
• View Deleted Items
• Restore Deleted Items
• Purge Deleted Items

Trash Overview

• By default, nodes, files, and media entities that are deleted from an OIT-hosted Drupal site will be moved to the trash for 30 days, after which time they will be deleted permanently. 

  • Not all types of content on Drupal sites go into the trash. If you have accidentally deleted something that is not in the trash, contact your website administrator or the Drupal support team at [email protected].

• You can restore items in the trash to recover them before they are deleted.
• You can manually purge items in the trash at any time, which will permanently delete the item. 

Permissions

Your ability to view, restore, and purge deleted items depends on your role and the permissions on your website.

Drupal Lite

Content Contributors

• View the trash
• View deleted content
• Restore deleted content

Site Owners

• Purge items from the trash to permanently delete them (note that content will be permanently deleted after 30 days if not purged manually) 

Drupal Enterprise

Permissions will vary; contact your site administrator if you need to recover or purge content and do not have permission to do so.

Viewing Deleted Items

1. Navigate to Content, then Trash in the admin toolbar.
2. This will display a table of any deleted nodes that are currently in the trash
   1. To view a list of files or media entities currently in the trash, use the navigation tabs within the trash
      
3. Click on the title of a node in the trash to view the node. The node content will display with a light reddish background color to denote that the item is in the trash.
   • Note: You cannot view files and media entities that are in the trash

Restoring Deleted Items

1. Locate the item you wish to restore in the trash (see View Deleted Items above).
2. Click the corresponding Restore button in the Operations column on the right. A modal window appears.
3. Click the Confirm button. 
4. If you have restored a file, you will need to edit and resave (without making any changes) any pages where the file was displayed in order to get the file to render again on those pages.

Purging Deleted Items

1. Locate the item you wish to purge in the trash (see View Deleted Items above).
2. Click the corresponding drop-down button to the right of the Restore button in the Operations column on the right. A drop-down menu appears.
   
3. Click Purge in the drop-down menu. A modal window appears.
4. Click the Confirm button.