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How to Recover a Deleted Duplicate in Rayyan

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This article covers what to do after deduplication if you deleted a record by mistake, or if you need to export the list of deleted duplicates for PRISMA reporting. Deleted duplicates in Rayyan are never permanently erased — they are always accessible from the Deleted filter in the Possible Duplicates facet.

Important Records deleted using the Auto-Resolver with Overall Similarity Percentage criteria cannot be recovered. This workaround only applies to records deleted through manual resolution or the Auto-Resolver with exact match criteria.

How to export the list of deleted duplicates

Exporting your deleted duplicates gives you a permanent record of exactly which references were removed — useful for PRISMA reporting and audit purposes.

  1. Open your review and go to the Review data tab
  2. In the left panel, open the Possible Duplicates facet
  3. Click Deleted to filter and display only the records removed during deduplication
  4. With the Deleted filter still active, click the Review Settings icon (the ellipsis …) in the top toolbar
  5. Click Export
  6. In the export settings, select Filtered and choose CSV as the format
  7. Confirm the export

You will receive a ZIP file containing two files: articles.csv — the full list of deleted duplicate records with citation metadata, and customizations_log.csv — a log of all customization actions associated with those records.

Best practice Export your deleted duplicates list as soon as deduplication is complete — before starting screening. This gives you a clean, timestamped record of removals that you can use directly for PRISMA reporting or share with your team for audit purposes.

How to restore a record deleted by mistake

Rayyan does not have a one-click undo for duplicate resolution, but deleted records are always retained in the Deleted filter and can be restored using the following workaround:

  1. Export the deleted duplicates following the steps above
  2. Open articles.csv in Excel and locate the record you want to restore
  3. Remove all other rows — keep only the record or records you want to bring back
  4. Save the file
  5. Re-upload the file into your review via Add References. Give it a clear name such as Restored – [article title] so it is easy to identify
  6. Re-run duplicate detection. Rayyan reuses your previous resolution decisions where possible — previously Resolved duplicates will be recognized and reused, and previously marked Not Duplicates will also be reused. Other previously deleted duplicates will remain deleted — only the records you re-uploaded will be treated as new
Common issue After re-uploading a restored record, your reference count will temporarily increase until you re-run duplicate detection. Always re-run detection after restoring records to keep your counts accurate for PRISMA reporting.

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