OneDrive and SharePoint recycle bins

Deleted content in OneDrive and SharePoint passes through two stages before it is

unrecoverable. Knowing which stage an item is in tells you how much time you have.

Stage	Where	Default retention
First stage	The user's or site's recycle bin	93 days from deletion
Second stage	Site collection recycle bin (admin)	The remainder of the same 93 days

The 93 days is counted from the original deletion, not from when the item moved

to the second stage. Emptying the first-stage bin moves items to the second; it does

not restart the clock, and it does not buy more time.

After 93 days the item is gone as far as the service desk is concerned.

Not everything in a recycle bin was deleted by a person. Check the Deleted by

column:

Meeting expiration service — a Teams recording reached its auto-expiry date.
Retention policy — a compliance policy acted on the item.
Sync client — a local delete propagated from a device, sometimes long after

the user forgot doing it.

That column frequently answers the ticket on its own.

Restore returns the item to its original path with its original URL, so links

in chats, documents and emails start working again. Copying the file out instead

produces a new URL and leaves every existing link broken.

into an occupied path produces a duplicate, not a merge.

A file that still exists but has been damaged, overwritten, or encrypted does not

need the recycle bin — it needs version history. Every library keeps previous

versions by default. This is the fastest route back for "someone saved over my work"

and for the early stages of a ransomware event, where the files are present but

their contents are not.

For bulk damage — a mass delete, or a sync client that removed a large tree —

Restore this library rolls a whole library back to a point in time within the

last 30 days. Prefer it to restoring thousands of items individually.