With over 75 million active users, Canva is one of the biggest graphics design platforms in the world. This application has many easy-to-use features that allow even beginner graphics designers to edit photos efficiently and create beautiful photos and designs. This incredible app even allows users to store their photos and designs right inside the platform safely and efficiently. But disaster can still strike, and you can lose your important photos and projects in a blink. Therefore, in this article, we will show you how to easily restore the photos deleted from Canva. Let’s dig in.
Why Did I Lose Files from Canva?
Canva comes with many amazing features that allow you to manage your designs and share them with others. But if you’re not careful, these very features can become a curse, and you might lose your photos and designs with one wrong click. In this section, you will learn several major reasons people lose files from Canva.
1. Multiple Accounts
Do you have multiple Canva accounts? If that’s the case, you might not have lost the photos yet. Maybe the design you’re looking for is stored in a different account. People with multiple Canva accounts often forget the exact account they kept their designs in. As a result, they often think that the photo or design they are searching for is no longer in their account. Thus, if you have a couple of Canva accounts, make sure to sign in to the other accounts and check if the photo is there.
2. Shared Design
Sometimes, if the file you’re searching for was shared with you by the other team members, you might be unable to find the design file in the normal folders. In this case, there are two possibilities.
- The original creator of the file has removed the photo or design
- The file is located in a separate space of your Canva account
Unfortunately, you can’t do anything if it’s the first case. But if it’s the second case, you can find the shared design by following one of these two paths:
- Navigate to your “Team’s page” and then go to the “Design” tab.
- Visit the All your designs page → Shared with you.
3. Team Member Removal
If you are a part of a company that uses Canva, and you’re not one of the admins, you might be unaware of any administrative changes within Canva accounts. For example, if the admin suddenly deletes a whole team’s account or removes a member from the team, you would lose access to the designs and photos stored within the deleted team’s account. If someone accidentally suspends your account, you won’t have access to any of the photos and design data you saved within. In this case, you have to contact the administrator to regain access.
4. Multiple Teams
With Canva, you can collaborate with many other people on your team while creating a design. This allows you to share your ideas with the rest of the team members and make appropriate changes together. If you’re a part of multiple teams, and you’re unable to find a design or photo that you’re looking for, then the photo may be stored in the account of a different Canva team. This often happens with the art professionals who are a part of multiple teams at the same time. Therefore, all you have to do is switch to the different teams and look for the photo file. Here’s how you can do that:
- Go to your “Canva account dashboard” and click on your “Profile Picture.”
- Click on the “Switch Team” option.
- Select the team you would like to switch to and search for the missing design.
5. Accidental Deletion
If you have explored all the cases we have mentioned above and still have no clue about the file, you have probably accidentally removed the photo file from your Canva account. In this case, check out the next section of this article to restore the photos erased from your Canva account.
Now that we discussed the reasons a photo or design file might go missing from your Canva account. Now, let’s see how to restore the photos deleted from Canva in this section.
1. Restore Deleted Photos from the Canva Trash Folder
No matter how the photos had been erased from Canva, they wouldn’t disappear immediately. All the photos and designs removed from Canva would move to the Canva Trash Folder and stay there for 30 days before being permanently erased. Ergo, if you want to restore photos deleted from Canva, you must check the Trash folder first. Here’s how you can do it:
- Open your Canva account and click on the “Trash” option in the left panel of the dashboard.
- Search for the photo or design you want to restore. Once you find the file, select it and click on the “three horizontal dots” to open a new prompt.
- Click on the “Restore” option, and the selected photo or design will move back to its previous folder in Canva.
2. Use a Data Recovery Application to Restore Photos Erased from Canva
Did you save the Canva photo on your computer? If you did, then the photo could still be recovered from your PC’s hard disk drive using a professional data recovery application. Just ensure that the data recovery app comes from a reputable company and that it has many positive reviews from both the consumers and the data recovery experts. Once you find a proper data recovery application, download and install it in a separate storage media.
While you can download and install it on your PC, doing it might overwrite the deleted files that are still stored in your hard disk drive. To minimize the chance of data overwriting, installing the data recovery application in an external storage media is the best option. Now, since most professional data recovery apps have a similar recovery process, follow the instructions below to restore the photos deleted from Canva:
- Connect the external storage media containing the data recovery app to your computer.
- Now, launch the data recovery program and select the drive in which the Canva photo was stored before its deletion.
- Click on the “Scan” option, so the application can start scanning your hard disk drive for the available recoverable files.
- Once the scan is complete, the application will show you a list of recoverable files. Look for the photos you want to recover and select them.
- Click on the “Restore” button.
- Select a folder where you would like to download the selected files and then click on the “OK” button.
Now, all your selected files will be downloaded to the location you chose.
