Is there a way to auto “put back” everything in Trash?

Question

My wife saw the folder 'all documents' in Finder and decided to move it all to the trash.

Now we have over 9,000 files in the trash and I haven't been able to find a way to put back everything with one click.

For some reason it will only let me 'put back' one file at a time.

Is there any way to automate this?

Answer 1

If "Put Back" is disabled for a multiple-item selection it means that (at least) one of the items selected doesn't have its original location information stored in the Trash directory's .DS_Store file.

Though it's less than ideal, try multi-selecting subsets of the files looking for groups that you can "Put Back" en masse before resorting to manual filing for the remaining files.

Answer 2

you should be able to highlight every file or at least do it in incremental batches, copy them then re-paste them I believe. I just tried it and if you double click your trash can then right click the files you wish to restore there is a "put back" option which only works file by file, as said i would highlight then press C-c (command c)to copy then C-v(command v) to paste them back.

Answer 3

This worked for me:

• Create a new folder in Finder, I called mine "recovered files"
• Open Trash folder and select a group of files
• Copy files and paste into "recovered files" folder.

If you need to put back a large folder, or a large number of individual files, use this technique. If you need only 1 or 2 files, just use the "put back" feature.

Answer 4

1. Open terminal tool (In Applications/Utilities)

2. At the prompt, type

   cd

3. Then type

   mkdir myStuff

This makes a folder called myStuff

1. At the prompt type

   mv .Trash/* myStuff

2. The contents of the trash will reside in folder myStuff.

there is no record of where things came from. You must restore manually.

Answer 5

MAC OSX does not natively* have the ability to restore files to their originally locations that they were deleted from (as can be done natively in a Windows environment with the "Restore" option in the context menu for Recycle Bin). I accidentally did the same thing as your wife did at one point with around 10,000 plus files being deleted. After exploring all my options I preformed a system restore via Time Machine. It was by far the most expedient method to get said files to their proper locations.

* If someone knows differently please feel free to correct me.

Update: Upon review it is possible using the "Put Back" feature introduced with Snow Leopard.