How to Delete and recover files in Teams

Posted on by Summa Lai

Microsoft Teams

Use Teams on the desktop or web to delete files. Use SharePoint or OneDrive to recover them.

Delete a file from a channel

  1. Go to the Files tab in a channel.
  2. Select More options  More options button  next to the file and then select Delete.

    Select Delete

    To delete several files at once, select each file by clicking the left side of its row, and then select More options  More options button  next to one of the selected files.

    Select multiple files

Delete a file from a chat

You can remove a file from a chat message you’ve already sent by editing the message (see Edit or delete a sent message for instructions).

If the file you shared to a chat came from your cloud storage (like OneDrive), you can delete the file from the Files list. 

  1. Open Files on the left side of Teams.
  2. Under Cloud storage, select the cloud service where you originally saved the file.
  3. Select More options  Microsoft Teams more options icon  next to the file and then select Delete.

Recover a deleted channel file

  1. Open the channel’s Files tab and select Open in SharePoint at the top of the page.
  2. In SharePoint, select Recycle bin on the left side of the page. 
    This will show a list of all files deleted from every channel in the team.
  3. Select the file (or files) you want to recover and then select Restore at the top of the page.

Recover a deleted OneDrive file

  1. Open Files on the left side of Teams and then select OneDrive.
  2. Select Open in OneDrive at the top of the page.
  3. In OneDrive, select Recycle bin on the left side of the page, select the file you want to recover, and then select Restore at the top of the page.

Ref: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/delete-and-recover-files-in-teams-a591d771-89a6-49e2-ab7e-271936fe3c4e