Guide
How to recover a deleted Framer CMS item
If you have deleted a CMS item in Framer and need it back, this guide explains exactly what your options are — and, honestly, what your options are not.
First: what does Framer's version history actually save?
Framer's built-in version history — the "History" panel in the editor — saves snapshots of your canvas: layout, components, design tokens, pages. It does not save CMS content. When you delete a CMS item in Framer's Content tab, that deletion is immediate and permanent from Framer's perspective. Rolling back to an earlier canvas version does not restore the item.
This is not a bug — the canvas and the CMS are separate concerns in Framer's architecture. But it catches a lot of people off guard.
The Framer Server API and what it means for recovery
Framer exposes a Server API (currently in beta) that lets you read and write CMS collections programmatically. The API provides methods to fetch all items in a collection, add new items, and remove items.
There is one critical constraint: deleted node IDs cannot be resurrected. When an item is deleted in Framer, its internal node ID is gone. If you try to create a new item with the same node ID via the API, Framer will create a fresh item with a new ID instead. This means that even if you have a complete copy of the item's data, the restored item will have a new ID — and any other CMS items that had reference fields pointing to the old item will need to be re-linked manually.
Your recovery options, in order of practicality
Option 1: A dedicated backup tool (most reliable)
If you were using an automated backup solution before the deletion, recovering the item is straightforward: find the snapshot that contains the item, view its field values, and use the restore feature to write it back to Framer via the Server API.
The restore call uses the Server API to recreate the item with all its field values — text, rich text, images, references, and more. Because of the node ID constraint described above, Framer will assign a new ID. You will see a clear "recreated with new ID" notice so you know which reference fields (if any) need attention.
Without an existing backup, this option is not available to you. But if you are reading this guide after recovering from a deletion, this is the main reason to set up backups now.
Option 2: The Framer CMS Export plugin (manual, point-in-time only)
Framer has a first-party CMS Export plugin that lets you download your CMS data as a CSV. If you or someone on your team ran an export recently, you may have the item's data in that file.
The limitation is that this export is entirely manual — it only exists if someone explicitly ran it before the deletion. There is no automatic history. And re-importing from CSV is also manual: you would need to paste the data back field by field through the Framer UI or write a script using the Server API.
Option 3: Contact Framer support
Framer support may be able to help in some cases, particularly for accidental bulk deletions. However, CMS content is not covered by canvas version history, so recovery depends on whether Framer has a separate backup infrastructure on their end — something that is not publicly documented and not guaranteed.
For a single item deletion, support recovery is unlikely. For a catastrophic loss of a large dataset, it is worth trying. Either way, you should not rely on this as your primary plan.
Option 4: Reconstruct from memory or secondary sources
If none of the above apply, your last option is manual reconstruction: re-enter the item's data from memory, from a Google Doc, from your own content drafts, or from a cached version in a browser or web crawler (Google cache, Wayback Machine). This is time-consuming and often incomplete, especially for structured fields like dates, references, or rich text.
What to do right now if the deletion just happened
- Check whether anyone on your team has a recent manual CSV export from the Framer CMS Export plugin.
- Check whether your browser has a cached version of the page that rendered the deleted item (open DevTools, look at the network cache or application storage).
- If the item was recently published, check Google Cache or the Wayback Machine for the URL that displayed it.
- Contact Framer support and describe the deletion — include the project name, collection name, and the approximate time of deletion.
- Set up automated backups before the next deletion happens (more on this below).
After recovering: preventing the next one
The most effective prevention is an automated backup that runs without requiring anyone to remember to export. The Framer Server API makes this possible: a server-side process can read your entire CMS at regular intervals and store the result in persistent storage.
What a good automated backup gives you:
- A timestamped snapshot of every CMS item, every field value
- The ability to browse the history and see what the item looked like at any point in time
- A restore path that handles the reference-remapping complexity for you
- CSV and JSON exports for any snapshot, any time
FrameVault: automated Framer CMS backups
FrameVault connects to your Framer project via the Server API and takes automatic weekly snapshots (daily on Pro). Browse the full history, compare snapshots field by field, download JSON or CSV, or restore a deleted item directly from the dashboard. The Free plan is available without a credit card.
Note: item restore creates a new node ID due to a Framer Server API constraint (beta). FrameVault surfaces a clear warning when this applies.