How to restore only some files or part of your Minecraft world

You do not have to roll the whole server back to fix one thing. Open a backup with Restore some files... on the Backups page. Put back one area of the map, one player's data or one plugin's folder, and everything else stays as it is now. You can undo it for 24 hours.

Pick the right backup

1. Open your server in the panel and click Backups in the left menu.
2. Each finished backup says World as of and a time. Pick the newest one from before the problem.
3. Open its menu (the three dots at the end of its row) and choose Restore some files....
4. The window Restore some files from the backup's name reads the backup first. A big backup takes a few minutes.

You need permission to restore backups and to read files.

Undo griefing in one area

1. Stand in the damaged area in the game and press F3 to see your position. Note the X and Z.
2. In the window, open the tab An area of the map.
3. Choose the Dimension, type the X and Z, and choose The region holding that block or That region and the 8 around it.
4. Click Restore this area.

Minecraft stores the world in regions of 512 by 512 blocks, so the whole region comes back as it was, with its mobs. Builds made in that region since the backup are lost, so check with your players first. A running server stops for the moment the files are swapped, then starts again. A stopped server stays stopped: start it when the window says Restored.

If the damage is near the edge of a region, pick That region and the 8 around it.

Bring back one player's inventory

A player's inventory, ender chest, position and health are kept in one file per player, named after their UUID.

1. Find the player's UUID. If the player is on your whitelist or is an operator, open whitelist.json or ops.json in the main folder in Files: each entry has the player's name and uuid.
2. Ask the player to leave the server.
3. In the window, on Files and folders, open your world folder and then the player folder: playerdata on most versions, or players then data on Minecraft 26.1 and newer.
4. Tick the file that starts with the player's UUID and ends in .dat.
5. Click Restore selected.

The player gets back what they had at the backup's World as of time. Their advancements and statistics are separate files in the same world folder, if you want those back too.

Put back a plugin's settings or data

1. On Files and folders, open plugins and the plugin's folder, for example its config file or its whole folder.
2. Tick what you need and click Restore selected.

The same works for any file the backup holds, such as server.properties, whitelist.json or ops.json.

Undo the restore

The files a restore replaced are kept in a folder called .pnh-restore for 7 days. To put them back, open the same window within 24 hours and click Undo last restore.

Good to know

• Logs and crash reports are not in backups.
• If the backup did not hold a region you asked for, the window says so and leaves that part as it is.
• To restore everything, use Restore to server instead: How to back up, restore and reset your Minecraft world.
• To undo griefing block by block instead of region by region, a logging plugin helps: How to undo griefing with CoreProtect on your Minecraft server.
• The same window for every game: How to restore only some files, or one area of your map, from a backup.