PDF, covering rich objects covering buttons, videos, audio, images, links, etc, offers an easy and reliable way to present and exchange documents. The Portable Document Format (PDF) developed by Adobe is commonly used by both organizations and individuals. However, there’s a chance your PDF files go missing due to accidental deletion, system crash, hardware failure, or other reasons. All is just lost!

So, how do you recover PDF and get your PDF files back? Here’s a thorough PDF recovery guide, including how to recover deleted & unsaved PDF files. We’ll start with the simplest solutions.

How to Recover Temporarily Deleted PDF Files?

The first thing you can do is to check your Recycle Bin. When the PDF file is deleted from your Windows PC, it is stored in the Recycle Bin for 30 days. Assuming that you delete the PDF file recently, it should be there. Here’s how to recover PDFs that are temporarily deleted from Recycle Bin with ease.

Step 1. Double-click the “Recycle Bin” icon on your PC. You can view all the recently deleted files.

Step 2. Scroll down and find out the PDF file you want to recover.

Step 3. Right-click the PDF file and click Restore to recover deleted PDF files saved in the Recycle Bin.

Note: The Recycle Bin has file size limits. Deleted PDF files will possibly be removed from Recycle Bin if the file size exceeds the maximum size. Deleted PDF files are only retained for 30 days by default from the time you delete them.

Also Read: How to Recover Recycle Bin Deleted Files After Empty >>

How to Recover Permanently Deleted PDF Files?

PDF files will be permanently deleted if you use the Shift+Delete or empty the Recycle Bin. If your storage media storing the PDF is formatted or gets damaged, PDF files saved there will be permanently deleted as well. If so, more professional data recovery software is needed to recover PDF files.

iTop Data Recovery is preferred for its high reliability and success rate. The software can recover lost, and permanently deleted PDF files with up to a 95% success rate in a few clicks. You can recover PDF files stored on hard disk, SSD, and other storage devices. Besides, the PDF recovery tool supports 1000+ file formats, including videos, photos, documents, and music, to name a few. Thanks to an intuitive and user-friendly interface, it’s as easy as pie to recover PDF files. Use the steps below to get started.

Step 1. Free download the PDF recovery tool, install and launch the tool on your PC. The program works on Windows 11/10/8/7.

       

3,000,000+ Downloads
from 100+ countries & regions

Key Features of iTop Data Recovery

• Recover 1000+ file types like images, music, documents, video, etc
• Get back deleted & lost files from different storage devices
• Provides instant data recovery for any emergency data lost reasons
• Free preview files before recovery.

Free Download

For Windows 11/10/8/7

Step 2. Open the tool on your PC, on the main interface, and click the “Scan” button to start scanning deleted PDF files. The time the scanning process takes depends on the file size. You can preview the recoverable PDF files when the scanning process completes.

Step 3. Select the deleted PDF file you’d like to recover from the list of recoverable files.

Step 4. Click the Recover button to start recovering PDF files. Click the OK button to finish the PDF recovery and close the window. That’s all. Now, you get all your PDF files back.

Also Read: How to Recover Shift Deleted Files >>

Some PDF tools, such as Adobe Acrobat Pro and Foxit Reader, offer autosave features that can be used to recover unsaved PDF files easily. The automatic recovery feature protects your PDF files against system/program crashes and power/hardware failure. Use the following guide on how to recover unsaved PDF files with the autosave feature in Adobe Acrobat Pro and Foxit Reader respectively.

Recover Unsaved PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro

The Autosave feature from Adobe Acrobat Pro saves PDF file changes to a location. It stores all the changes to the PDF files. If the autosave feature is enabled, it’s quite easy to recover PDF files. Only 3 steps are needed. If you haven’t set up the automatic saving, go to Categories > Preferences > Documents, select Automatically Save Document Changes To Temporary File Every xx Minutes, and set the number of minutes.

Step 1. Open Adobe Acrobat Pro or open the PDF file you want to recover.

Step 2. Click Yes from the prompted screen and open the autosave PDF files. The PDF recovery tool opens all of the PDF files you were working on recently.

Step 3. Save the PDF file to your computer. That’s it.

Recover Unsaved PDF in Foxit Reader

Foxit PDF Reader has a feature that recovers unsaved PDF files when opening the tool. Note that the application only recovers unsaved PDF files that last opened when starting the tool. Foxit Reader won’t restore your lost PDF files. Its PDF recovery feature needs to be improved further. Some users complain that their unsaved PDF files fail to come back with Foxit Reader. Use the following steps to restore the last opened & unsaved PDF files with Foxit Reader.

Step 1. Open the Foxit Reader on your Windows PC.

Step 2. Head to Tools > Preferences, and select History. You can set the maximum number of documents in the history list and the recently used list. Check both “Restore the last session when the application starts” and “Restore last view settings when reopening”.

Step 3. Click on OK to save the preferences. Now, when starting the software, you can recover PDF that last opened on the application.

Also Read: How to Recover Unsaved Word Document >>

The Bottom Line

It’s a hassle-free task to recover PDF files. You can recover temporarily deleted PDF files from Recycle Bin and restore unsaved PDF documents with the autosave features from Acrobat or Foxit Reader. When it comes to permanently deleted/lost PDF recovery, a more reliable tool, iTop Data Recovery, is required. It’s intuitive and stable, enabling you to retrieve PDF files from any storage device and any data loss situation. Grab the tool and recover all your missing PDF files with the highest success rate.

       

3,000,000+ Downloads
from 100+ countries & regions

Key Features of iTop Data Recovery

• Recover 1000+ file types like images, music, documents, video, etc
• Get back deleted & lost files from different storage devices
• Provides instant data recovery for any emergency data lost reasons
• Free preview files before recovery.

Free Download

For Windows 11/10/8/7