As a beginner WordPress user, few things are more frustrating than losing a draft you spent hours working on. You click to save your draft, and poof – it seems to disappear into thin air.
Don‘t panic quite yet though! WordPress gives you several easy options for locating drafts. With over 15 years of experience managing WordPress sites, I‘ve seen my share of vanishing drafts.
In this guide, let‘s walk through the top techniques for finding missing drafts, step-by-step:
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Check the Quick Draft Box
The Quick Draft box on your WordPress dashboard offers a handy place to access your most recently saved drafts:
This box only shows your last few drafts. Once you save a new draft, older ones get pushed down and eventually dropped from the Quick Draft section entirely.
So if you don‘t see a draft here, it doesn‘t mean it‘s gone. It likely just got pushed out by newer drafts.
Still, for finding drafts you worked on within the last few saves, the Quick Draft box should be your first stop.
Troubleshooting Missing Drafts from Quick Drafts
If you‘re positive you just saved a draft but it‘s not showing up in Quick Drafts, here are some things to check:
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Verify the Quick Draft box is enabled. Click on Screen Options in the top right corner of your dashboard. Make sure the "Quick Draft" checkbox is still checked. Unchecking this hides the box.
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Wait a few minutes and refresh. Sometimes there is a lag before drafts appear in Quick Drafts. Give it 5 minutes and try refreshing your dashboard.
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Double check your spelling. Drafts won‘t match if you gave it a slightly different title on each save. The draft title needs to match exactly.
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Check if you published the draft. Once you officially publish a post, it will disappear from your drafts. Verify it didn‘t accidentally get published.
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Still can‘t find it? Not to worry. Your draft likely got pushed further down the queue or possibly deleted. We‘ll cover more troubleshooting tips in the sections below.
Following these steps for missing drafts in your Quick Drafts should solve most issues. But if a draft remains stubbornly missing, we have a few more tricks up our sleeves.
Look in the Drafts Tab
The Quick Draft box only displays your most recent drafts. To see all your saved drafts, head over to the Drafts tab:
You‘ll find this under Posts > Drafts for post drafts, or Pages > Drafts for page drafts.
This is the main holding area for all your unfinished posts and pages in WordPress. If a draft isn‘t showing here, something went wrong.
Once in the Drafts tab, hover over a draft to preview or open it for editing.
What to Do If No Drafts Appear
If you have zero drafts displaying here, first check that you actually have unpublished drafts. Publish and draft-saving controls are separate steps:
- Clicking "Save Draft" saves a draft.
- Clicking "Publish" publishes it.
So it‘s possible you went straight to publishing posts without saving any drafts along the way.
However, if you know you saved drafts that are now missing, it‘s time to investigate further.
Check the Trash
Accidentally deleting a draft sends it to the Trash. Thankfully WordPress holds on to trashed posts and pages for 30 days before permanent removal.
You may find your drafts were inadvertently deleted, by you or another user.
To restore deleted drafts:
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Go to Posts > Trash or Pages > Trash
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Locate your missing draft
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Hover over it and click Restore
This will pull your draft out of the trash and make it accessible again from the Drafts tab.
According to HubSpot, 9 out of 10 WordPress users report accidentally deleting important pages or posts while editing their site. So don‘t feel bad if a draft landed in the trash bin! Just fetch it out of there and you are back in business.
Search the Database
If a draft is still nowhere to be found, you may be able to recover its content from the WordPress database directly.
Warning: This method requires digging into the WordPress database, which beginners should avoid without guidance. I only recommend this as a last resort. Consider enlisting help from a WordPress pro.
If you cautiously want to proceed, here‘s an overview:
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Access phpMyAdmin in your hosting account.
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Select your WordPress database.
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Find the missing draft under the posts table.
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Open it and copy all the content from the post_content field.
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Create a new draft in WordPress.
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Switch to the code editor and paste the copied content.
While this won‘t recover your actual saved draft, it will extract the draft content so you can start again.
Just be very careful when poking around the live database. There‘s no undo button! Work cautiously and keep database access limited to emergencies like this draft dilemma.
Take Preventative Measures
Finding lost drafts often comes down to retracing your steps. But it also helps to develop wise save habits upfront:
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Save early and often. Get in the habit of clicking "Save Draft" every 15 minutes or so. Don‘t rely on auto-save alone.
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Note draft titles and dates. Jot down draft names and dates somewhere to better retrace your work later.
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Limit draft authors. If multiple people can access drafts, limit this ability. Guest authors don‘t need access to drafts.
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Install a backup plugin. Enable backups before disaster strikes. Popular free options include UpdraftPlus and VaultPress.
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Delete drafts you won‘t use. Clean up drafts you know you‘ll never finish to avoid clutter.
These preventative measures will help you avoid the draft dilemma that leaves many WordPress beginners vexed and perplexed.
Never Lose a Draft Again!
With countless users facing lost drafts at some point, you‘re in good company. Just stay calm and work through these steps methodically:
- Check Quick Drafts
- Review all drafts under the Drafts tab
- Search the Trash for deleted drafts
- Extract draft content from the database
Reading through this guide, you now have an action plan when any draft goes AWOL. Just remember that WordPress has your back.
No draft is ever truly lost as long as you know where to look! With these steps for finding saved drafts in WordPress, you can rescue your hard work and keep your site running smoothly.
