Accidentally delete a worksheet in Excel? You can recover it. Follow these steps to undo and recover a deleted sheet in Excel software.
Excel is one of the most popular software for creating robust data sheets. Most of us use Excel to create documents like income statements, balance sheets, marketing budgets, calendars, statistics, and more. One of the best things about Excel is its many options while supporting many built-in and custom Excel functions.
As part of managing data in Excel, it is common to make mistakes. One of those common mistakes is deleting an entire worksheet in Excel. For example, maybe you deleted one sheet instead of another, got confused between the sheet names, etc. No matter the reason, when you delete a sheet in Excel, it is permanently deleted from the files.
However, under two specific circumstances, you can undo it. i.e., recover a deleted sheet in Excel. Once recovered, you can save the file again and get the data back intact.
This quick and easy guide shows you how to recover a deleted sheet in the Excel application. Hopefully, the below steps will help you undo the deleted sheet in Excel.
Table of contents:
Recover deleted sheet in Excel
After deleting a worksheet in Excel, you have two specific chances to recover it. One before saving the file and another after saving the file. I will show both methods. Follow the method depending on your use case to recover a deleted sheet in Excel.
Before saving the Excel file
If you haven’t yet saved the Excel file after deleting the worksheet, you can recover the deleted Excel worksheet pretty quickly. This is because the changes haven’t been saved yet. Let me show you how.
- First, close the Excel application.
- When prompted, press the “Don’t save” button.
- Open the Excel file again.
- You should see the deleted worksheet in the Excel file.
- With that, you recovered the deleted Excel worksheet.
Steps with more details:
First, close the Excel application. You can do that by clicking the “X” icon in the top-right corner. When prompted, press the “Don’t Save” button. That way, the changes in the Excel file won’t be saved.
Next, find and open the Excel file. You should see the deleted worksheet if you haven’t saved the Excel file after deleting the sheet as soon as you open it.
With that, you have successfully recovered the deleted Excel worksheet.
After saving the Excel file
If you saved the Excel file after deleting the worksheet, you have another way to recover the deleted sheet, assuming that you are using OneDrive to save and store Excel files. Here is how.
Office 365
If you are using Office 365, it uses OneDrive to save files. So, we can use the built-in options to recover deleted Excel worksheets. Here’s how.
- Open the Excel file.
- Click the “File” option.
- Go to the “Info” tab.
- Click on the “Version history” option.
- Select a version to open it in a new window.
- If you have the deleted sheet in this version, click the “Restore” button.
- If not, open other versions until you find the deleted worksheet.
- Once restored, save the Excel file.
- With that, you have recovered the deleted Excel worksheet.
Office 2016 – 2019
If you are using Office 2019 or older, you can still recover deleted worksheets using OneDrive, if you are using it to save Excel files. Here’s how.
First, go to OneDrive using the below link. You can also search for it on Google or Bing. If prompted to log in, authenticate and log into your Microsoft account.
https://onedrive.com/ or https://onedrive.live.com/
Find the Excel file in your OneDrive account. Next, select the file. You can do that by selecting the checkbox on the file.
After selecting the file, click the “Version History” option on the top bar.
As soon as you do that, OneDrive will open the Excel file in a new tab with older versions appearing on the sidebar. Go through each older version until you find the deleted worksheet.
Once you find the version you are looking for, click the “Restore” or “Download” link under the version on the sidebar.
That is it. With that, you have successfully restored or recovered the deleted worksheet in Excel using OneDrive.
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Important note: If you are not using OneDrive to save Excel files and already saved the Excel file after deleting the worksheet, there is no way to recover the deleted sheet in that situation.
As you can see, it is pretty simple to recover deleted sheets in Excel
I hope this simple Excel how-to guide helped you.
If you are stuck or need some help, send an email, and I will try to help as much as possible.