How to Restore a Deleted Worksheet in Excel

By Ruri Ranbe

Both Microsoft Office 2013 and Windows 8 include new features that enable business users to restore old files and revert changes to important documents. MS Excel provides access to previous saved and unsaved versions of a workbook, while File History catalogs backups of files in your libraries. If you've deleted a worksheet but need to restore the data to your workbook, check Excel or File Manager for an older version of the file.

Saved File

Open Excel, click "File" on the menu bar and then click the "Info" tab.

Select a previous version of the file from under the Versions heading.

Click the "Restore" button on the yellow bar to recover the worksheet.

Unsaved File

Open Excel, click "File" and then click "Info." Click the "Manage Versions" button and then choose "Recover Unsaved Workbooks" from the menu.

Select the file to restore and then click "Open" to load the workbook.

Click the "Save As" button on the yellow bar to recover the worksheet.

File History

Press "Windows-E" to open File Explorer and then browse to the folder containing the applicable workbook.

Click the Excel file, click the "Home" tab on the menu bar and then click the "History" button in the Open group.

Choose the version to recover and then click the "Restore" button to undelete the worksheet.

Tips

You can't access or restore an older version of a file in File History unless you've already enabled the feature on a storage device.

Warnings

You can't recover previous versions of a workbook that may include the deleted worksheet in Microsoft Excel if AutoRecover is disabled, if the Office program did not create backups of saved or unsaved files or if the backup files have been deleted.

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