Deleted something in your home education app? Here is how to get it back

Short answer

If you have just deleted something in your home education app, do not panic. Email [email protected] with what you deleted and roughly when you deleted it, and we will restore it from backup. Most requests are sorted within one working day.

Before you email, though, read the next couple of sections. What feels like a deletion is often a filter catching you out (a common trip-up in any homeschool app), especially if a child seems to have vanished.

I cannot find a child in my home education app

This is the one that makes your stomach drop, but it is almost never a real deletion. The most common cause is a filter that has narrowed your view.

1. Open your Activity Log.
2. Look at the top of the page. If there is a child filter active, it will show one child's name. Tap or click it and select All children.
3. Check the date range. If you have narrowed the dates, activities for that child may simply fall outside the window you are looking at.
4. Check the sort order. If it is set to oldest first, recent entries will be at the bottom.

If the child still does not appear after clearing filters, head to Children in the sidebar. Every child you have added is listed there. If you can see the child's name, nothing has been deleted.

If the child genuinely is not listed, email [email protected] and we will restore from backup.

I deleted an activity by mistake

When you tap the delete icon on an activity card, the activity is removed. There is no in-app undo for this. The record is gone from your view, but it is not gone from our backups.

Here is what to do:

1. Note what you deleted (the activity title, the child it was for, and roughly what date it was logged).
2. Email [email protected] with those details.
3. We restore from backup, usually within one working day.

That is it. You do not need to recreate the activity from memory. The backup includes the full record: title, notes, date, child, any Montessori area tracking you added, and any observation you attached.

I deleted a child

This one is rarer, because Willowfolio shows you an explicit warning screen before it happens. When you choose to delete a child, the app lists exactly what will go with them: reports, activity logs, observations and books. You have to confirm before anything is removed.

If you did confirm and now regret it, email [email protected] with the child's name. We can restore the child and their associated records from backup. It is a bigger restore than a single activity, so it may take slightly longer, but it is still recoverable.

My data looks wrong or reports seem off

Before assuming something has been deleted, run through these quick checks:

• Date filter: Open the Activity Log and check whether a date range is narrowing what you see. Clear it and see if the missing entries reappear.
• Sort order: If you are sorting oldest first, recent work will be at the bottom. Try switching to newest first.
• Child filter: If you are viewing one child's activities, switch to All children. The entry you are looking for may be logged under a different child.
• Reports: Once a report has been finalised (submitted as your final version), it cannot be unfinalised. You can, however, create a new draft report for the same period if you need to make changes. The finalised version stays on record alongside the new draft.

If things still look wrong after these checks, email [email protected] and tell us what you expected to see. We will look into it.

How this looks in practice

Gemma, a single parent in Sunderland, was logging her daughter's activities at quarter past eleven on a Tuesday night between shifts. She was tired, tapping quickly, and deleted the wrong activity. It was a nature walk from the previous week that she had written up properly, with notes about what her daughter had noticed and a Montessori area tag.

Her stomach dropped. She looked for an undo button, could not find one, and felt a flash of panic that the record was gone.

She emailed [email protected] at twenty past eleven with a short message: "I accidentally deleted an activity called 'Pond walk, Tuesday 15th' for my daughter. Can you get it back?" By the time she checked her inbox the next morning, there was a reply confirming the restore. The activity was back in her log, complete with her original notes and the area tag.

If Gemma had not remembered the exact title, a rough description and date would have been enough. Backups are timestamped, so we can usually find the right record even with approximate details.

If your data looks wrong in a way that suggests someone else has accessed your account (activities you did not log, children you did not add, settings you did not change), change your password immediately under Settings, then Account and email [email protected].

If something has gone wrong in Willowfolio that this article does not cover, write to us at [email protected] and a real person will sort it out.