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BeginnerAcronis · about 15 min · 28 October 2026

Restore deleted files from an Acronis backup

A user has deleted a folder, or overwritten a spreadsheet, and needs yesterday's copy back. This guide shows you how to restore files from an Acronis backup in the Cyber Protect console, how to download a few files straight to your own machine, and what to do when the original computer is offline.

Before you start

  • An account that can see the workload in the Cyber Protect console.
  • The name of the machine the files came from, the file or folder names, and roughly when they were last good.
  • A working backup of that machine. If the tenant is in Compliance mode, you can't recover backups from the Cyber Protect console. Use Acronis's separate guide for Compliance mode tenants instead.
Acronis has renamed Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud to Acronis Cyber Platform. These steps follow the current Cyber Protect console documentation. If your screens look different, check the docs linked at the end.

Step 1: Find the right recovery point

  1. Sign in to the Cyber Protect console.
  2. Select the machine that originally held the data.
  3. Click Recovery.
  4. Pick a recovery point from before the files were deleted or changed. Recovery points are filtered by location, so if the machine backs up to more than one place, check you're looking at the right one.
No recovery points showing? If the machine is physical and offline, none will appear. If the backup is in cloud or shared storage, click Select machine, choose another online machine with a protection agent, then select the recovery point. Acronis recommends this option. You can also use the Backup storage tab, or the download method in Step 4.

Step 2: Choose the files

  1. Click Recover > Files/folders.
  2. Browse to the folder, or use the search bar. You can use the wildcards * and ?, for example Budget*.xlsx. Search isn't available for disk-level backups stored in the cloud, so browse instead.
  3. Tick the files or folders you need.

Step 3: Recover them to a machine

  1. Click Recover.
  2. Under Recover to, keep the default (usually the original machine) or choose another machine that has a protection agent installed.
  3. Under Path, choose where the files go: the original location, a local folder on the target machine, or a network folder the target machine can reach.
  4. Click Start recovery.
  5. Choose an overwrite option: Overwrite existing files, Overwrite an existing file if it is older, or Do not overwrite existing files.
Overwriting can't be undone. If you restore to the original location with Overwrite existing files, any changes the user made since the backup are lost. If you're not sure, restore to a new folder such as C:\Restore and let the user copy across what they need.

Step 4: Or download the files instead

For a handful of small files, downloading is quicker.

  1. Follow Steps 1 and 2, but select files only, not folders.
  2. Click Download, choose where to save, and click Save. The files arrive as a .zip.

Download isn't available if you select folders or more than 100 MB of files. For bigger cloud restores, use the Web Restore console:

  1. In the Cyber Protect console, select the workload and click Recovery.
  2. If there's more than one backup location, select it and click More ways to recover.
  3. Click Download files. Sign in again if asked.
  4. Under Machines, click the workload name, then the backup archive.
  5. Click the backup (recovery point) you want, browse to the items and tick them.
  6. Click Download. Several items download as a .zip.
You can't browse system state, SQL or Exchange database backups this way, and you can't download whole disks, volumes or recovery points.

Check it worked

  • Open the Activities tab in the Cyber Protect console and check the recovery shows as succeeded.
  • On the target machine, open the restore folder and check the files are there, with the dates you expect.
  • Open one or two of the files to make sure they aren't empty or corrupt.
  • Ask the user to confirm it's the right version before you close the ticket.

Sources

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