[Fixed] How Can I Recover The Recent Folders Missing?

How can you recover the recent folders missing? This article can answer this question with 8 methods, you can try the one most suitable for you.

Posted by @Tina December 17, 2024 Updated By @Tina July 24, 2024

Help! How can I find out the recent folders missing?

 

I found my recent folders on my desktop that kept important apps, documents and files seem to have disappeared. My first thought is that I may have deleted it by accident or moved it to a different drive, but it doesn't make sense. I’ve run 3 different types of recovery software, but couldn't find any files. Is there any useful method to find out the recent folders? I appreciate any help.

- Question from forums.tomshardware.com

Why are the recent folders missing?

To provide a more convenient working environment, Windows will record the history to access and modify the PC. It will store the files and folders you opened recently in a folder called "Recent Folder". Therefore, you can quickly open the recent files.

However, due to system errors, wrong operations, and other hidden reasons, you may encounter the recent folders missing problem. It’s really troublesome that the recent folders cannot be quickly found, especially when you have something urgent.

So in the following part, we talk about how to deal with recent folders missing on Windows 10 issue.

How to retrieve the recent folders missing

Sometimes, the recent folders will hide because of the wrong operation. You can try the following solutions to make it visible.

β˜… Solution 1. Pin the recent folders to Quick access

If you cannot quickly find out the recent folders, you can pin them to Quick access. Please follow the steps to do it.

Step 1. Press "Win+R" to open the Run program, then type "shell:::{22877a6d-37a1-461a-91b0-dbda5aaebc99}" and click "OK".

Step 2. You will be guided to the "Recent folders window", click "Pin to Quick access". Then the target recent folders will be stored on Quick access.

 β˜… Solution 2. Reset the Quick Access Folders

Resetting the Quick Access folders can be another method worth trying. You can show the recently used files in Quick access.

Step 1. Press "Windows" and then type "folder options", select "File Explorer Options".

Step 2. In the new window, click "General" and select open File Explorer to "This PC". Click "Apply" and "OK" in turn.

β˜… Solution 3. Restore the folders defaults

If the recent files not showing in Quick access, you can also restore the folder defaults. Just follow the former method to open the "Folder Options" in the "General" tab, click "Restore Defaults".

 β˜… Solution 4. Show the recent folders via Windows Setting

If you turn off the showing recently opened items option in Windows Setting, the recent folders will also hided. Here is the process to enable this option again.

Step 1. Open the Windows Setting, click "Personalization" in the left pane, then click the "Start" option.

Step 2. Then turn on the "Show recently opened items in Start, Jump Lists, and File Explorer" button.

 β˜… Solution 5. Directly locate the folders

Apart from the above methods, you can directly navigate the recent folders.

Step 1. Click "Windows", input "file explorer" and press "Enter".

Step 2. In the popped window, input "C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows" and press "Enter". Then you can see the recent folder.

How can you recover the accidentally deleted recent folders?

If the mentioned methods didn't help you find out Windows 10 recent folders missing, maybe the folders are deleted accidentally. You can try the following solutions to recover them.

β˜€ Method 1. Find the folders on the Recycle Bin

Usually, the deleted files will be stored in the Recycle Bin. So if you cannot find the recent folders in the File Explorer, please turn to the Recycle Bin to seek for them.

β˜€ Method 2. Restore the folders to the previous version

Since Windows will record the changes of the disk, so once the files be corrupted, lost or deleted, you can recover them by restoring them to the previous version.

Step 1. Open the File Explorer, turn to the original position of the files or folders missing, then return to the upper option.

Step 2. Right-click the target folder, then click "Restore previous versions" and select the earlier version, click "Restore" to start this operation.

 β˜€ Method 3. Recover the lost folders with a powerful disk manager

Sometimes, you cannot recover the recent folder from the Recycle Bin, for you have emptied it. Is there any alternative to recover the recent folders missing? The powerful AOMEI FastRecovery can be a good choice.

Without any data recovery experience, you can easily retrieve any data with it, such as images, files, video, audio, documents, and so on. Its graphic user interface can make you recover the lost recent folders with a few clicks. In addition, you can also recover data from different devices, including HDD, SSD, USB, SD card, etc. 

Functions of AOMEI FastRecovery: βœ” Recover deleted or lost files from HDD, USB, SD card and various storage devices. βœ” Retrieve Word, Excel, PPT, photos, videos, audio, emails, zipped files, and over 200 other file types. βœ” Keep the original format of recovered files. βœ” Search for target Word files by typing the file name during the scan, or wait for automatic discovery with Quick Scan and Deep Scan. βœ” Supports NTFS, exFAT, FAT32 and ReFS file systems. βœ” Compatible with Windows Server and Windows 7, 8, 10, 11 64-bit and 32-bit.

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Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI FastRecovery. Choose the exact partition or disk where your data lost and click Scan.

Step 2. Then, the recovery tool start to scan and search. lt will execute the “Quickly Scan" first for finding your deleted data fast, and then execute the “Deep Scan" for searching other lost data.

Step 3. Once the scan is completed, all deleted files, recycle bins and other missing files will be displayed. Please select the file you would like to recover and then click "Recover".

Step 4. Then, select a folder path to save your recovered files.

Step 5. Wait patiently for this process of recovering ends.

Bottom line

In this post, to find out the recent folders missing, we shared some practical methods. If the folders have been deleted, we also provided 3 solutions to recover them. As you can see, if you want efficiently recover the removed recent folders, the AOMEI FastRecovery can be the first choice.