Restoring deleted tests and practice spaces

As an admin on the Organization plan, you can restore a deleted test or practice space yourself for seven days, from Account settings → Recently deleted. It comes back with its results and shared with the same people. After that, our support team can still bring it back until the retention period ends, which is 12 months by default.

It's what you need when a teacher accidentally deletes tomorrow's test, or the practice space their class has been using for weeks.

Restore a test or practice space

1. Go to Account settings and, under Advanced, open Recently deleted.
2. You'll see the tests and practice spaces deleted in the last seven days, with who deleted them and when. The most recent ones are at the top.
3. Click Restore.

You'll see Restored, and the item disappears from the list.

What comes back

The item comes back as it was, with all its questions and settings. It's shared again with everyone who had access at the moment it was deleted.

For a test, the results, comments and version history come back too. The results can show up a little later than the test itself. A result a teacher had already deleted separately stays deleted.

The item goes back into its old folder. If that folder no longer exists, the item ends up outside any folder.

What you can't restore here

Recently deleted only lists tests and practice spaces. Source materials, folders, questions from the question bank, users and individual student results can't be restored here. Anything deleted more than seven days ago isn't listed anymore either. In those cases, email hi@examplary.ai: as long as the retention period hasn't passed, we can restore it for you.

Good to know:

• Deleting a folder doesn't delete what's in it. Its tests and practice spaces end up outside any folder, and colleagues who only had access through that folder lose it.
• If a question has gone missing from a test, bring it back through the test's version history. Working on tests with colleagues explains how.

Choose how long deleted data is kept

When something is deleted in your workspace, it isn't gone for good right away. It's kept for a while so our support team can restore it, and then it's permanently deleted. That period is the retention period, and it's 12 months by default.

On the Organization plan, you choose it yourself:

1. Go to Account settings and, under Advanced, open Security & compliance.
2. Under Data retention, choose 6, 12, 18 or 24 months.

You'll see Data retention updated.

The retention period applies to almost everything that gets deleted, such as tests, practice spaces, results, source materials, folders, users and groups. A new period applies, within five minutes, to whatever is deleted after that. Anything already deleted keeps the period that applied at the time. The audit log isn't affected: we keep it for as long as your organization exists. After the retention period, data only lives on in our backups, which we keep for 90 days. Data residency and backups has more on that.

Check who deleted something

Every test or practice space that's deleted or restored is recorded in your workspace's Audit logs, with the item's name and who did it, so you can always look back at what happened. See Audit logs.

What teachers can do

Teachers don't have a trash bin, and there's no undo button after deleting. If a teacher deletes something by mistake, they should ask an admin to restore it within seven days. If your school isn't on the Organization plan, email hi@examplary.ai.

Troubleshooting

I don't see Recently deleted. You're not an admin or owner, or your workspace isn't on the Organization plan. Roles & permissions explains what each role can do.

The test isn't in the list. It was deleted more than seven days ago. Email hi@examplary.ai and we'll check whether we can still restore it.

The results aren't back yet. They come back shortly after the test. Refresh the page after a few minutes.

Further reading

• Working on tests with colleagues
• Audit logs
• Data residency and backups
• Roles & permissions