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Here Is How You Can Recover A Deleted Desktop Flow An Easy Way

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Posted on by Aneel

One of my important desktop flow vanished after an update. so I thought of a way to recover it, did dozens of searches but got no luck. after a little bit of digging, I found a very easy way to recover the deleted desktop flow. Here is how I did it.
All of your previous flows are saved in a temp file i.e: \AppData\Local\Microsoft\Power Automate Desktop\Designer\Temp

There will be a bunch of random folders, each folder contains one of your previously created desktop flow in it. there were 350+ in my case. There's a file within that folder "script.robin" It has all the steps of the flow in plain text.

Getting Exact File

Rather than going through each folder 350+ times, I automated it. Created a simple flow that loops through each folder getting the file contents of script.robin. You have to remember anything unique labels, folder names, file names, or anything that you used in the flow. Then just simply crop the text and use "If flagFound = True" you found your deleted flow.

Import To PAD
Create a new flow and Simply copy everything below "@SENSITIVE: []" and paste it to PAD.

Thats all you have recovered the deleted Desktop Flow From Power Automate Desktop.

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Power Automate Desktop

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Gidi 601 on at

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Nice solution. Thanks for sharing.
To avoid this we should always backup our flows (e.g. in a Solution) before updating PAD 😉

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adrian142 22 on at

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I lost my flows. None is visible in PAD anymore.
I found some script.robin folders.

But I don't know how to import into PAD. I am running on Windows.
And it seems that I am not able to simply copy copy everything below "@SENSITIVE: []" and paste it to PAD.
It doesn't work for me.
What step could be missing???

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eetuRobo 4,484 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Try copy pasting only some actions and see if that works. So don't take all the rows at once and paste it into your flow but try couple of rows(actions) at a time. You should be able to recognize which actions are one row and which two rows since the actions are pretty readable.
Like for example in OPs pic

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CU07082216-0 2 on at

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I found the "script.robin" files in: \AppData\Local\Microsoft\Power Automate Desktop\Console\Workspace. The Designer\Temp folder was empty for me.

The "script.robin" file contains code for both the Main flow and code for any Subflows. So, trying to paste everything in the Main flow did not work for me. I had to create subflows for all code between the "FUNCTION' and "END FUNCTION" text. Then paste the remainder in the Main flow.

Alas, I also had UI Elements, like web page buttons, the flow required that I still do not know how to recover. There are other files in the same directory as the "script.robin" file that may have this data, but I don't know how to import it into PAD. Any suggestions would be helpful.

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PetrosF-MSFT Microsoft Employee on at

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Here is how to recover a deleted desktop flow - https://learn.microsoft.com/power-automate/desktop-flows/how-to/restore-deleted-desktop-flow

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