Time Machine: How do I restore individual files?

This is the fun space part. The fastest way to recover a missing item is to use Time Machine together with Spotlight.

1. Open a Finder window and type a word or phrase from the missing document into the search field in the upper-right corner. You may want to focus the search by selecting a search location (where the file was located) or adding search parameters by pressing the plus (+) button.
2. Open Time Machine (from the Dock or Applications folder.)
3. Use the arrows and the timeline along the right side of your screen to browse through the Time Machine backups. Your search is performed in every window.
4. When you find the item you want to restore, select it and click Restore. You can then choose to replace the current file with the restored backup or keep both files.

If you don’t know what the file you are looking for is called or what terms to search for it (i.e. a random photo stored in your iPhoto library) you can still restore it with Time Machine. Open the Apple application that the file used to appear in and then launch Time Machine. You can then browse backwards through time and see how your files appeared in iPhoto, iTunes, Mail, etc. When you find the missing item, click Restore. WARNING: Do not perform a restore operation while Aperture is running. You may lose data from your library if you perform a restore while Aperture is open.

Published March 24, 2009 12:00 PM
Last modified on June 26, 2009 3:13 PM