Restore Files With File History on Windows | Full Guide

What Is File History?

As a backup feature embedded within Windows operating systems, you can restore files with File History seamlessly.

It automates the process of creating backups by continuously monitoring selected folders for any modifications. These changes trigger File History to make copies of the altered files and store them in a designated backup location, often an external drive or network destination.

This ensures that you have access to previous versions of your files, serving as a protective measure against accidental deletion, corruption, or hardware malfunctions.

How does File History work?

File History operates in the background, requiring minimal user interaction once set up. You have the flexibility to customize backup settings, including backup frequency and folders to back up.

As files are modified, File History keeps track of changes and creates multiple versions of files, enabling you to revert to earlier iterations if necessary. This automated backup process ensures that your data remains secure and recoverable, even in the event of unforeseen data loss scenarios.

By providing a comprehensive backup solution with file history versioning capabilities, File History enhances data resilience and mitigates the risk of permanent data loss, thereby offering you peace of mind regarding the safety of your files.

How to Restore Files With File History

Now that you understand File History, keep on reading to see how to restore files with File History.

Tip: File History needs to be enabled previously to ensure that there are history versions available.

Step 1: Open File History. There are several ways to open File History in Windows so that when one way is out of work, you can try other ones.

Way 1: From File Explorer

This is a straightforward way to open it. Press Win + E to open File Explorer, then go to the target folder and hit the History button under the Home tab.

Way 2: From System Settings

Press Win + I to open Settings, and go to Update & Security > Files Backup. Choose More options under Back up using File History and click Restore files from a current backup under Related settings at the bottom of the Backup options window.

Way 3: Search for File History

Type File History in the search bar and choose Restore your files with File History.

Way 4: From Control Panel

Input Control Panel into the search bar, then open it and select System and Security. Choose Restore your files with File History under File History.

Step 2: When the File History window opens, you can view all the backed-up folders and files. Now, select the folder or file you need and hold Ctrl to select multiple items. If you cannot find the folder or file you want, you can type the name in the search box and hit Enter to search for it.

After you select the folders and files you want, click the Green Restore button to restore them. Or, you can click the Gear icon in the upper right corner and select Restore to, then choose a suitable location to save your files.

Another Way to Restore Files With File History

Here is another method to restore data from File History, and it can also be used for a corrupted file.

Right-click the target folder or file and choose Restore previous versions. Under the Previous Versions tab, select a version you want if there are folder or file versions available. Next, click the inverted triangle button next to Restore and select Restore or Restore to to recover your files.

Other Ways to Restore Files on Windows

Although File History provides you with a powerful backup solution to protect your important files and folders, it also has limitations. For example, it cannot help back up and restore system files, program files, and folders other than user folders. If you need to recover these types of files, we recommend that you try the following two methods.

Use MiniTool Power Data Recovery

If you fail to find the files you need with File History, you can use the best data recovery software– MiniTool Power Data Recovery – to restore your files. This data recovery tool supports you in recovering most types of files, including document files, archive files, photo files, database files, and more.

You can use this tool to restore your software data, game data, or other data that File History cannot restore. Moreover, many data recovery cases like deleted file recovery, formatted hard drive recovery, crashed computer file recovery, etc. can be easily handled with the best solutions provided by MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

You can recover files with this free data recovery software from your computer’s internal drive, external drives, and other storage devices.

Get this powerful data recovery tool and restore your important files now.

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Here are detailed steps to recover your files with this data recovery tool.

Step 1: Open MiniTool Power Data Recovery and its interface appears.

Step 2: You can see all the partitions on your computer in the Logical Drives tab. Choose a partition you want to scan and the Scan button will occur, then hit it and the scanning process will start.

You can also choose a specific location to scan, like the Desktop, Recycle Bin, or a folder by clicking the corresponding buttons under Recover From Specific Location. Generally, scanning a specific location is faster than scanning a partition.

Here we scan a specific folder as an example. Place the cursor on Select Folder and click Browse. When a window pops up, choose a folder and click Select Folder to start the scanning process.

Step 3: Wait for the scanning process to complete. When it’s done, go to the Type tab where all the files are classified according to their file type. Suppose you’re going to restore jpg files, you can expand Picture under All File Types and choose jpg. Then you can view all the jpg files to find the ones you need. Moreover, you can click a file and choose Preview to confirm if it’s the one you need.

In addition, if you want to add more restrictions to find your files more rapidly, click Filter to add more filter criteria, such as file type, modified date, file size, and file category.

Step 4: After selecting the required items, click Save and choose an appropriate location to save these files.

Use Windows Backup and Restore

In Windows 10 and Windows 11, Backup and Restore is not enabled by default. So this method requires you to turn on Windows backup previously. If you haven’t turned it on when your files are lost or deleted, you cannot restore your files through Windows Backup and Restore.

Here you can see how to restore your files with it.

1. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Backup and Restore (Windows 7).
2. Select Restore my files under Restore.
3. Click Search… to search for files accurately, click Browse for files to choose files, and click Browse for folders to choose folders. Then complete the file recovery according to the instructions on your screen.

How to Turn on/Use File History

How to turn on File History if you have not enabled it? You can activate it from Control Panel or Settings.

From Contro Panel

1. Open Control Panel and go to System and Security.
2. Choose File History, then click Turn on.

From Settings

1. Open Setting by pressing Win + I and go to Update & Security > Files backup.
2. Turn on the button under Automatically back up my files.

How to use File History to back up files?

File History will back up the files you added every hour by default, and you can change these backup settings to meet your needs. Here is how to change them from Control Panel or Settings.

From Control Panel

Step 1: Go to Control Panel > System and Security > File History.

Step 2: Click the buttons under Restore personal files on the left panel.

• Select drive: You can choose a new drive to save copied files.
• Exclude folders: You can choose some folders not to back up.
• Advanced settings: You can change the backup interval.

Step 3: After that, go back to the File History page and click Run now, and File History will back up files according to your settings immediately.

From Settings

Step 1: Go to Settings > Update & Security > Files backup and choose More options.

Step 2: You can change the backup interval from the Every hour (default) drop-down menu. Next, click Add a folder under Back up these folders, then you can add a new folder to back up to File History. At the bottom of the Backup options page, you can also exclude folders from the backup and choose a new drive to save copies. Finally, click the Back up now button to start the backup process.

See Also: How to Fix File History the Errors 200 and 203

Another Way to Back up Files

As we mentioned above, while File History excels at protecting personal data, you should be mindful of its exclusions and consider alternative backup methods for comprehensive data protection. Here is another available way to back up your files.

Back up files with MiniTool ShadowMaker

To back up your files seamlessly, you can use a professional PC backup tool – MiniTool ShadowMaker. This is a free backup tool for Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7 that can keep your data security at the highest level. It provides you with reliable backup solutions and flexible backup schedules so that you can perform a quick system restore or file recovery.

As a free backup solution for Windows, MiniTool ShadowMaker securely creates backups of your files, directories, system configurations, disks, and partitions onto internal or external hard drives, USB drives, and network-shared folders. This Windows backup software provides automatic backup functions based on multiple schedules to simplify the backup process.

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Continue reading to learn how to back up your files with MiniTool ShadowMaker.

Step 1: Launch MiniTool ShadowMaker, then a window will pop up. Click Keep Trial and you are allowed to use the Trial edition for 30 days.

Step 2: When its interface jumps out, go to the Backup tab and click SOURCE to select the files or disks to back up. Choose Folders and Files to choose which folders and files you want to back up.

Also, you can choose Disk and Partitions to back up a disk or partition.

Step 3: Click DESTINATION to choose a location to save the backup, and you can choose a partition or folder as a destination. Then click Back Up Now.

After performing the steps above, the backup process will start, and you need to wait until it is finished.

Conclusion

As a built-in backup feature on Windows, File History allows you to back up and restore files with it. To restore files from File History successfully, you need to turn it on to create a backup before your files get lost. You can use other alternative ways we’ve introduced to you to recover your files if you haven’t turned it on previously. Additionally, besides File History, you can use other backup tools like MiniTool ShadowMaker to protect your files.