How to Restore Deleted Assets with Cloudinary’s Management Console

If you're like most of us, you've probably deleted assets, only to realize days or weeks later that you need them back. Thanks to Cloudinary’s extensive backup system, it's easy to retrieve your deleted files. 

This tutorial shows the steps to restore a deleted file using Cloudinary's Management Console. For further information about Cloudinary's ability to restore deleted assets, we recommend reviewing our documentation on the subject.

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Tutorial Sections

• Enabling Backups in your Cloudinary Account
• Finding Your Deleted Assets
• Accessing and Restoring a Deleted Asset
• Options for Assets Deleted via 'Bulk Delete'
• Additional Resources

Enabling Backups in your Cloudinary Account

If you want to restore your deleted assets, you will need to have backups enabled on your account's setting page. The feature must be enabled before an asset was deleted, so you can recover it from backup.

Please review our tutorial on the backup setup process, especially if you have not already enabled backups or if you want to ensure it is set up correctly.

If you're trying to restore assets that you deleted before enabling backups, you can send us a service request ticket. Our Customer Success team will work with you to determine your options.

Finding Your Deleted Assets

To see your deleted assets, navigate to the Media Library’s search bar and click on the "Add more" button and choose "Delivery types".

Now choose "Deleted assets":

Accessing and Restoring a Deleted Asset 

Once you find your asset, select it, and click on the "Restore" button. Note that previews aren't supported for deleted assets, so it's important to make sure you’re selecting the right file. You can do this by double-checking its public ID and file format (e.g. JPG, PNG, PDF, MP4, etc.) from the available assets.

Options for Assets Deleted via 'Bulk Delete'

Whether you are using Cloudinary’s Admin API or the Management Console, you can delete all of your assets in bulk.

Bulk deleting can be very handy when trying to remove a large number of assets with a simple action. However, it is also a very intense action that's complicated to retroactively restore. If you do find that you need to bring back assets that were deleted via our Bulk Delete functionality, send us a support request ticket. From there, our Customer Success team can evaluate your options.

Additional Resources

Many of the steps shown in this tutorial are similar to those for retrieving backup revisions. We recommend reviewing our tutorial on that topic to become more well-versed on scenarios with our backup system.

If you are interested in learning how to restore asset versions via our Admin API, we also have documentation on that feature.

And of course, feel free to send us a ticket if you have any questions about this process. We’re here to help you be successful with your projects.