If you’ve ever deleted the wrong file (or cleaned up a little too enthusiastically!) Canva’s bulk restore feature makes recovery much easier. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to select and restore multiple files at once from your Trash, how permanent deletion works, and why this update is especially helpful during large organization sessions.
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Transcript
Until recently, if you deleted files in Canva by accident, you could restore them from the Trash, which was a real relief. Knowing there was a recovery option made it much easier to work confidently in your account. The only limitation was that files had to be restored one at a time, which worked fine for the occasional recovery but became inefficient when multiple files needed to be restored.
Canva has now rolled out the ability to bulk select files inside the Trash and either restore them or permanently delete them all at once, making it much easier to manage deleted content.
How Bulk Restore Works
To do a bulk restore, head to the Trash inside your Canva account, and then once you’re there, the selection behaviour works the same way it does elsewhere in Projects. You can hover over files and check them off individually, or click and drag to select multiple items at once.
As soon as you select a file, a toolbar appears along the bottom of the screen. If you’ve ever bulk moved or deleted content from Projects, this will look familiar. The difference is that the available actions are specific to the Trash.
From this toolbar, you’ll see two options: Restore and Delete.
Choosing Restore removes the selected files from the Trash and restores them to Your Projects, whereas choosing Delete in the trash permanently removes the files from your Canva account.
That said, Canva will automatically empty the Trash after 30 days, so there’s often value in keeping that recovery window available rather than permanently deleting files right away. Personally, I never use the permanent deletion feature because I don’t find it necessary.
Why the Canva Bulk Restore Update Is Useful
This bulk restore feature is especially helpful if you’re cleaning up or reorganizing your Canva account. When you’re working through a larger cleanup (or even just trying to stay on top of ongoing organization) it’s easy to accidentally delete something you didn’t mean to.
Being able to restore multiple files at once makes those moments much easier to recover from. Instead of restoring files one by one, you can bring back an entire group of designs, images, or videos in a single action and have them returned to Your Projects, which helps you keep your organization intact and maintain your momentum.
Whether the mistake happened because you deleted the wrong version, got a little too tidy-crazy, or were simply distracted, this update makes it easier to course-correct and keep moving forward.
