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Jerry LFlag for United States of America

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How to Recover Moved Folder on Windows 10

SYSTEM
Windows 10 Pro
Laptop with Touchpad

BACKGROUND
Sometimes, when using File Manager with Folder Tree on the left side-panel, the mouse pad unintentionally grabs a file or folder and drops it somewhere else. Since this was not an intentional move, I don't realize what happened until it has already been dropped into another folder. I have no idea where it went. I do not want to reduce the sensitivity of my touch pad.

QUESTION
Primary: How to recover from a file or folder move that was unintentional, and you have no idea where it was moved to. Please share what ideas you have for such a situation. There does not seem to be and UNDO function for this situation.

Secondary: Perhaps I can find a TOOL that creates a FILE that contains a SNAPSHOT of the file and folder STRUCTURE of my entire hard drive, or a specified range of it. When a mistake occurs, and I cannot easily locate the lost file or folder, I can create another snapshot and COMPARE the two.
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Hello There

This seems too complicated. You can simply search for this file and folder and move it back. This is simpler and faster than reverting back and comparing files/folders.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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McKnife
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It is likely found inside one of the folders that was immediately above or below the folder that got moved.

You could take a snapshot with a command such as this: dir c:\ /ad /s > c:\dirlist.txt

As mentioned, this is not likely to be very useful for this problem.

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ASKER

CTRL+z did not seem to help. That's mostly for editing within a document, not for OS operations, from what I can tell. I tried it first thing.

The real problem is I don't really know what just happened. It was a slip up of the mouse pad, remember.  So you don't even know which file or folder got moved. Microsoft is at fault for not providing an Undo for this situation. Or some history. But not sure if any Linux UX has a "Undo" function for such a thing either.

Is there an Activity Log for file and folder OS operations? That would be nice to have.

Thanks, CompProbSolv, for the command line script. I'll have to try it .
Out of the box Windows 10 wouldn't have any file auditing enabled.  I know there are some features that can be enabled, but not sure how useful they would be to your case.  And from what little I know they typically consume quite a bit of processing and disk space to accomplish the comprehensive logging.

You might be able to look for folders with a recent Modified Date/Time stamp as a clue to folders that have had files or folders added to them...  I think File Explorer can probably get you to that, but I happen to use a nice utility (for my needs anyway) called "Everything".  It can index any drives or folders you want, and then allows extremely fast searches for files or folders based on a number of attributes.  An example below showing just folders on my B: drive, sorted by most recently modified.

voidtools - Everything

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»bp
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ASKER

@CompProbSolv - Creating a list of all files and folders might be useful at times, as well. The command line string you offered does that. So it's a good reminder for me.

@BillPrew I have not used "Everything" in several years, but it is worth taking another look at it.

Regarding whether moving a folder will alter it's timestamp, it does not seem so. In Folder > Properties, I only see Creation date. I'm not sure how to view modification or access date using Windows OS. Everything should provide that as you suggest.

@McKnife - It turns out that "CTRL+Z" in fact will UNDO multiple recently performed operations. I was not aware of this effect on Operating System commands such as "Move". Thought it was only for documents, or deleted items. Now I know differently since I did a simple test.

Create new folder at root of disc.
Name it Temp2.
Move Temp into Temp2.
Observe Timestamp. > No change.
Press CTRL+Z a few times and that entire sequence is UnDone

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"the mouse pad unintentionally grabs a file or folder and drops it somewhere else "

My experience has been that the mouse pad (or mouse) doesn't do this by itself.  The usual culprit is someone navigating down the folders, touching (accidentally) the left mouse button or the touchpad, dragging a folder, and releasing it over another folder.  The end result is that the folder is moved to a nearby folder.

I rarely use the left mouse button when navigating.  I'm a big fan of the right button so I have another chance to decide if I want to move, copy, or shortcut the folder or to cancel when I didn't mean to do it at all.
it's the same thing that happens when moving the mouse over a window, and clicking when navigating over the top section - so the window will enlarge  to full screen; i don't know why it seems to happen more since W10, but i have the imprression that did not happen so much with W7, and previous OS.  
it looks like the OS is made more sensitive -  but that is only my opinion
my solution is to search directly the folders around which the move was made. - but sometimes i still find a "moved" folder still
Another workaround is to develop the habit of avoiding drag and drop operations in preference to cut and paste. I find that a much safer process for moving items in File Explorer.
Regarding whether moving a folder will alter it's timestamp, it does not seem so. In Folder > Properties, I only see Creation date. I'm not sure how to view modification or access date using Windows OS. Everything should provide that as you suggest.

Correct, but the modified date of the folder you accidently drop the file/folder into should be updated.  So when you look at the most renctly changed folders and see one that you don't expect to have been changed recently, then you look there for folders/files that don't belong.


»bp
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ASKER

Thanks to everyone for providing multiple ways to conceptualize and approach the problem.

@McKnife came through with the most obvious answer. When the folder got moved, prior to my posting this EE question, I was not even certain that anything HAD actually happened. Then, when pressing CTRL+Z a couple times, I was NOT SURE anything had actually gotten restored! You don't always SEE the behavior of that command.

So, the idea of viewing the MODIFIED DATE of the nearby folders using Microsoft "File Explorer" becomes practical.

Also, having a file and folder list before and after would allow using a DIFF utility such as Beyond Compare (my favorite). But then again, how often are you going to create such a list? Probably not going to happen. Nonetheless, the DOS "DIR" command line arguments have been provided.

Some other suggestions provide value as well, such as possibly avoiding the problem by using Right Click or Cut and Paste, or using 3rd party tools such as "Everything".