I tested to see what some popular Linux file managers do in this scenario, GNOME Files and KDE Dolphin. Neither of them have undo in the right-click menu. Pressing ctrl+Z pops up the standard "Do you want to permanently delete this file?" confirmation dialog.<p>Dolphin goes one step further, if you say yes to the confirmation dialog, it shows an additional one: "The file (copy) was copied from (original), but since then it has apparently been modified at (time). Undoing the copy will delete the file, and all modifications will be lost. Are you sure you want to delete (copy)?"
A similar annoyance is the fact that excel's undo applies to all open excel files. Make a change in a.xls, make a change in b.xls. if you ctrl-z twice with b.xls focused, it'll undo both of the above changes!<p>This has bitten me more than once. Does anyone actually want this behavior?
"Undo copy" seems like it should not even exist. Delete does the same. Seems like the result of trying to hard to "improve" the UI.
You know what's even more awesome? Select the desktop and press Ctrl+Z. The last thing you did in Explorer gets undone. Even if it was copying a 100GB file from a network share drive onto your local hard drive. Even if that was weeks ago. It's fantastic.
This happened to me once. I thought I was doing ctrl-Z inside of an app I had been using up to a few minutes earlier, but I hadn't realised that instead a File Explorer window that was currently highlighted.
You'd think that with Windows having an install size of some 7GB that Microsoft would still have room for a tiny amount of code that would prevent this stupid behavior from happening.<p>For decades, there have been other stupid annoyances with Windows Explorer such not providing options in 'Copy' to allow the automatic renaming of files in cases where the destination contains files of the same name. It stands to reason that there'll be occasions when one doesn't want to overwrite destination files.<p>For years, I often wondered about how Microsoft employees actually use the stuff they create—or if they use it at all.<p>How can they continue to use a 'nobbled' Windows when they have the power to actually fix these annoyances? It sort of defies all logic and reason.<p>Does anyone know the reason?
Undo Copy is a fine feature; there was a recent post here about clipboards and managing the cost of large copied objects.<p>The problem here is that "undo copy" acted as "undo paste", a ridiculous bug.
Jetbrains IDEs have a "Local history" feature that is not well known. It watches local files and keeps a backup of previous versions of a file, independently from version control.<p>This has saved me from a few accidental unrecoverable changes.<p>git reflog is also your friend.
It should be noted that files can often be recovered if you notice soon after accidentally deleting them. You need a file recovery tool that understands your file format (Recuva is a pretty good free tool) but you can save yourself hours of work if you act quickly.<p>These tools rely on the fact that Windows (and most other operating systems) don't zero out the filesystem when deleting files. This means that the file contents are still there, all you're really missing is the reference to the file contents.<p>As long as the disk doesn't get overwritten, the files can be saved. The more surefire way to recover files is to stop writing to the drive as soon as you notice your mistake. If you want to use your existing OS for file recovery (much easier, but less likely to succeed) you will need to kill any program running and start a recovery program as soon as possible. Chances are you can't mark the drive you saved the file to as read-only, so speed and luck are essential. It helps to have a file recovery tool installed already, so you don't have to download and install one, increasing the probability of overwriting your precious file contents.<p>Using easy tools like Recuva and some other paid software, you can often get files back, not only from the original location but also temp files that may have been left behind during editing.<p>The most reliable way I know involves a Linux recovery disk. It's not exactly beginner friendly, but even moderate knowledge of Linux and the command line can save you hours of work.<p>The most surefire way I know to recover files is to kill the machine (pull the plug, hold down the power button, etc., so the shutdown process can't write any new files) and to boot into a live Linux distro packing recovery tools. Kali has a bunch, but there are others as well. Make sure not to mount the drive read-write (you probably can't get it to mount automatically after a forced shutdown anyway) so it doesn't corrupt your files and then run recovery software.<p>Testdisk [1] can often find deleted files, though it's built to recover partitions more than it was made to recover files.<p>ntfsundelete[2] is a command line tool that was made to find files that were likely to be deleted. It's especially useful if you know the name of the file you're trying to recover.<p>foremost[3] and its fork scalpel [4] are command line forensic recovery tools originally written by a member of the USAF Office of Special Investigations. They're not as well-maintained as some other tools but they're very versatile if your file format may not be recognized by other tools.<p>Finally there's Sleuthkit [5], a file recovery tool that will run from Linux leveraging other file recovery tools as well as its own forensic recovery tools, bundled together with a nice GUI. This too was designed for forensic analysis more than anything, but the GUI can help avoid tedious command line work.<p>With bigger files this becomes harder, because the file may be fragmented and because the larger the file, the higher the probability that new files have been written on top of the old file contents.<p>For Bitlocker encrypted drives, you'll need to use a tool like dislocker[6]. Make sure to mount data read only though, because Bitlocker is proprietary and reverse engineered tools have a habit of corrupting data when writing to disk.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk" rel="nofollow">https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk</a><p>[2] <a href="https://linux.die.net/man/8/ntfsundelete" rel="nofollow">https://linux.die.net/man/8/ntfsundelete</a><p>[3] <a href="https://foremost.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow">https://foremost.sourceforge.net/</a><p>[4] <a href="https://github.com/sleuthkit/scalpel">https://github.com/sleuthkit/scalpel</a><p>[5] <a href="https://sleuthkit.org/index.php" rel="nofollow">https://sleuthkit.org/index.php</a>
I have indeed lost work this way multiple times before. Wish there was some way to outright disable Undo Copy, or at least put it behind a confirmation dialog.<p>Edit: Actually read the entire page this time and there's indeed a registry edit to disable it, but it disables every other type of undo as well which isn't ideal.
I get that this is a bug in Windows Explorer, I really do. But the discussion is now focusing on all sorts of workarounds like undeleting files, looking up scratch/swap files, etc. When in my opinion, the correct solution is hourly backups. On average, only half an hour of work would've been lost.
I remember a video where the author accidentally deleted all the research and work they did for the video. After panicking and calming down, they typed CTL z (or selected undo in File Explorer) and got all their files back.
This looks like the Windows 11 interface. Thankfully Windows 10 doesn't seem to have that problem. However, Windows 11 has another glaring problem: the context menu includes a trash can icon (not labeled! Although I believe it does have a tooltip if you hover and wait) which, when clicked, deletes the right-clicked item. If you were attempting to open the trash can to look for a deleted file, you just deleted <i>another</i> file.
The folder you copy your file (any file that has some importance to you) to should be a onedrive synced folder. Word/Excel/Powerpoint/... files you edit in a synced folder save automatically without the need for you to ctrl+s.<p>If you undo copy that file you will find it in your onedrive history.
One might argue that this feature should not even exist, since it does not add anything (except probems) on top of a normal "delete" which you can do anyway.<p>Edit: I think I got this wrong. Most likely, this is due to some "Undo <action>" always being displayed.
My dream job would be to get hired directly by higher ups (board, VPs, etc.) and be given authority to hunt down and fix idiotic stuff like this.<p>It is a fantasy because seemingly stupid stuff often has relatively good reasons to exist, but boy would I have a field day at most big tech companies.
I treat every file that's important to me the same when I have to edit it, I hit save first, then edit what needs attention. After making any change more then a few minutes of work, hit save. Undo is always the last option.<p>I am a terribly slow typist, so this is a habit I formed many years ago.
When Windows Explorer first appeared 30 years ago, it seemed too complex for me, so I stayed with Norton Commander and its clones that entire time. Guess stupidity can be advantageous.
Not sure if it's the same issue, but undo (and redo) in Notepad was so frustratingly unstable. Maybe the fixed that already (my last Windows was the 8.1).