Windows XP forum: How to recover lost files after cutting and pasting folder?

When we are talking about the Windows Explorer, and you select a file or files and press Ctrl-X "Cut" it is simply marked for deletion. They haven't gone anywhere. You will probably notice that the icons for them will slightly "dim" just as a clue that you have marked them.
Then when you go elsewhere and do a Ctrl-V (Paste) the items you had marked are just moved from the old location to the new.

Where were they in-between the Cut and the Paste? they hadn't moved.
What if you had a bunch of files marked with Cut, and in the middle of the Paste something stopped the process?
The ones that were moved before the interruption moved,
the ones that haven't moved before the interruption haven't moved. They are still right where you had them.
What about the one that caused the interruption? well, it was interrupted, it didn't move, that was what you were being warned about.

This is still true if you had marked whole folders, with a lot of files in each folder. An interruption in the middle of a move only moved some of the files. The folders completed have moved intact.
With any folder not yet completed you will have an identically named folder in both places - one in the new place with the files that have moved before the interruption (and possibly a few that might complete after the interruption, depending upon the type of interruption), and the old folder is still in its original location with all the files that have not moved. You still have all the files, just some here and the rest there.

If you don't do anything else, as long as you don't do another Cut, Copy, or Paste, you can still do a Ctrl-Z (Undo). All the files moved will go right on back to where they came from. Doing an undo you might see one message about that one uncompleted folder. The message will say something similar to "This location already contains a folder named 'whatever'." that is just to let you know that you are about to move a folder called 'whatever' to a location where there is already a folder called 'whatever'. Don't worry about that, just click the [Yes].

The point about this Undo is DON'T try and guess what you need to do to get back to the way you were. Let Undo do it for you.
By the way, even if you don't remember what the keyboard command is for Undo, just look under the Edit command (remember we were talking about using Explorer). If you were doing a move you will see: File>Undo Move. If you were doing a delete, you will see the command File>Undo Delete.
Oh, and by the way, you don't have to use the same Explorer window either. Any Explorer window will know you had just done a Move or Deletion, and any Explorer's Undo command will work as well on the one action. You don't even have to be in an Explorer window. Even if you are just on the desktop, not in some other program, you can press Ctrl-Z and it will do the Undo.

Here's a hint. Until you get comfortable in all this cut and pasting stuff, instead just open two Explorer windows.
One for the "source" and the other showing the destination. Then just click and drag the files from one location to the other.
As long as the files are moving from one location to another ON THE SAME DRIVE the files will just be moved.
If the two locations are are on different drives then this same action will copy the files.
(You can always override the default action by holding down the Shift key - at the same time - to Move the files, or holding the Ctrl key to Copy the files, regardless of which drive you are going to.)

So, none of this gets your files back, does it?
From what you describe I can't tell what else you might have done, because what you describe should not have deleted any files. They should be in one place or the other. I can only guess that you might have missed the files that were back to where you think they should have been. Sometimes all it requires is for you to refresh the display of the folder, to have things appear back in the order you expect, just press the F5 key, that's the refresh.

The only other place I can think where they might be is in the Recycle Bin. Have you checked there? As long as the capacity of the Recycle Bin (which by default will be set to 10% of your drive (or partition) size, the files might be there. (anything deleted when it exceeds that 10% (or whatever it is adjusted to) limit will have the oldest files in the Recycle Bin removed to make room. Files removed to make room will really truly be gone.

OK, last point. How many Undo's can you do? just one (unless you have a special program that increases the Windows provision of one buffer). That buffer will remember just one cut, or one delete, and as soon as you do any other cut or delete then that wipes out any previous remembrance of a cut or delete.

Hope some of that helps you. Good luck in re-finding your files.
Hey! you know you could do a "Find" if you know the file names (or even just part of the names) to search your entire drive, to see if those files are somewhere that you had no idea you had "accidentally" moved them to.

Thank you Thank you Thank you ChuckT for that very detailed response...

It worked, as you can see if you look at the forum, i sent the thank you to the wrong location and it's posted as a new discussion, oops...

one of these days i will figure out how to use computers with a minimal amount of trial and error!!!!

hi i have read the forum regarding lost data and iam writing to u expecting an immediate help my situation is i have developed a proj and made a folder on desktop in which all my files recide due to my exams i did not opened that folder for 7 days and now when i need it its not on the desktop i have searched everywhere using search options as my laptop is also used by few fellows i dont know wether they deleted it or moved it or cut pasted it i gave my laptop to a professional but he said the chances are very low can u please tell me what exactly happens when some folder of size maybe 20 mb is deleted,moved,cut pasted and what way we can retrieve the files in this three situations ill be very delighted if u can help me as this is my final semister Msc-project
Thanks in advance

I clicked [No] for it. Is there any other way to retrive it? The file is very important and now i'll have to type it again.