Work with the Recycle bin

What you’ll find in this guide:

You’ll learn how to safely restore deleted pages, content items, and emails. You’ll also see how to check where your restored items appear and how to permanently delete content you no longer need. Plus, you’ll get a look at what happens in the background so you can avoid surprises on your live site.

When you delete a page, content item, email, or headless item in Xperience by Kentico, it is not permanently removed right away. Instead, Xperience moves it to the recycle bin, where you can restore it if needed.

This gives you a safety net when you:

Remove campaign content too early.
Clean up reusable assets and later realize they are still needed.
Test content and want to roll back the changes you made during testing.
Delete the wrong content by accident.

Xperience’s recycle bin helps you work with content confidently, knowing that deleted items aren’t gone for good.

Recycle bin prerequisites and permissions

If you don’t see the Recycle bin application, contact your administrator to check your permissions.

You need the View permission to access the recycle bin.
Users with the View permission can restore and permanently delete items they deleted.
Users can only see items they deleted themselves.
Administrators can work with items deleted by any user.

How the recycle bin works

Open the Recycle bin application from the Content management app in Xperience. Here, you’ll see items that you deleted, which may include pages, content items, emails,and headless items.

Recycle bin basics to understand

Before restoring content that you previously deleted, keep these rules in mind:

Restored items return in the Draft state.
References to restored pages and content items are also restored.
References to headless items are not restored.
Restored emails do not keep their statistics or contact activities.
Restored emails need to be reassigned to forms or wherever else they may be selected, because these selections are also not automatically restored.

Restoring items to the Draft status is especially helpful. It allows you to review the content and check where it is used before publishing anything to the live site.

Recycle bin retention period

Items in the recycle bin are deleted permanently after a set retention period.
By default, deleted items are kept for 30 days, unless your administrator changes this.

Retention policy and storage space

This information is primarily relevant for administrators.

Administrators can adjust the retention period in Settings → Content → Recycle bin.
The retention policy should balance how long you want to keep things recoverable with how much storage space you have.
Assets (such as images or videos) remain on the file system until the item is permanently deleted.

Restoring essentials

When you restore a page or content item, any existing references to it are also restored. This means that once you publish the restored item, it may automatically reappear in:

Hero items.
Linked content.
Promotional banners.
Emails.

Always check item usage before publishing. Restore only the content you want visitors to see.

Any restored assets used on a page will appear in Page Builder and in the Preview, even though they’re restored in the Draft state. That’s because both views show draft content. If you want to check what visitors actually see on your live site, copy your project’s public URL (everything before /admin) and open it in a new browser tab. You’ll see exactly what your audience sees.

Exercise 1: Delete and restore content

You’ll need a demo Kbank website to follow along with the exercises below. If you don’t have your demo site set up yet, request the Xperience by Kentico - Business Tutorial Kbank demo site through a form at Kentico website.

Delete and restore a content page

Goal: Learn how restoring pages works, and how it can affect other content.

Delete a page in the Personal banking channel – for example, the Advanced account page.
Navigate through Content management to the Recycle bin application.
Select the page you just deleted.
Click Restore and confirm the action.
Find the restored page in its original location. You’ll see it is restored in the Draft state.
Review its content.
Open the Used in tab to verify where the page is referenced (for example, in other content or product pages).
Publish the page.
Verify where it appears on the site.

Restoring a page may restore its references elsewhere. Always check the Used in tab before publishing.

Delete and restore a reusable asset

Goal: Learn how to delete and restore an image, and understand why checking the Used in tab is critical for reusable content.

Open Content hub and navigate to Brand assets folder.
Select an item – for example, the Kbank logo image – and check it’s usage in the Used in tab. In our case, it’s on the Personal banking homepage, in a hero banner, and in some promotional emails.
Delete the selected asset.
Confirm that the asset no longer appears where it was previously used.
Open the Recycle bin application.
Select the deleted content item.
Click Restore and confirm the action.
Open the restored item and go to the Used in tab.
Review all places where the asset is referenced.
Decide whether the asset should be published.
If some references are no longer suitable (for example, in a specific promotional email), remove such a reference from the page or content item.
Publish the asset.
Verify where the asset reappears.

Key takeaway: Restoring reusable content can impact multiple pages or emails at once.

Exercise 2: Permanently delete items from the recycle bin

Goal: Learn when and how to permanently remove content. Understand that permanent deletion cannot be taken back.

Open the Recycle bin application.
Select the item you want to delete permanently.
Click Delete permanently.
Review if the item isn’t referenced in some place where it should not be deleted from.
If all looks good, confirm the action.

Permanent deletion cannot be undone. Before permanently deleting an item, ask yourself:

Are you sure this content will never be reused?
Does it contain large assets?
Could some other team member still need to use it as a reference in some place?

If you’re unsure, leave the item in the recycle bin, and answer those questions before the retention period expires.

What to do if you can’t restore an item

Most of the time, restoring content works smoothly. If it doesn’t, it’s usually because something in your project setup has changed since you deleted the item.

Here are the most common reasons:

Missing permissions: Your role or permissions may have changed, and you no longer have the rights to restore the item to its original location.
URL conflicts: Another page is currently using the same URL, and two pages cannot share it.
Deleted parent pages: The original parent page no longer exists and must be restored first.
Deleted email templates or workspaces: The email depends on a template or workspace that has been removed, so it cannot be restored.

If you’re not sure why the content restore isn’t working, contact your administrator. For detailed troubleshooting steps, see the official Recycle bin documentation.

Wrap up: Confidently recover and clean up content

Xperience’s recycle bin acts as a safety net while you’re working with content. This material highlights the importance of:

Understanding the differences in deletion and restoration between pages, content items, emails, and headless items.
Using permanent delete carefully.

Armed with this information, you can now safely:

Delete items without immediate loss.
Review restored items or pages before publishing anything to the live site.
Review references to an item or page before publishing.

By following these checks, you can delete and restore content confidently and keep your project clean and organized.