I deleted my downloads folder from the dock and finder. How do I restore it to both locations?

I thought I was dragging a photo from downloads that shows in my task bar. Instead, I accidentally pulled all of my downloads into trash. I went to trash to try to restore but it was empty. I followed your directions, went to Finder and searched for downloads. I next drug it out of finder to the task bar where it was before and everything IS as it WAS. Thank you so much for posting this help.

Is it in your Trash? When you say you deleted it from the Finder, do you mean that you deleted Downloads from within your home/user folder? If not, where did you delete it from?

If you haven't emptied your Trash and Downloads isn't in the Trash, then you haven't really deleted it. It sounds like you may have just removed Downloads from the Sidebar and the Dock.

Open a Finder window and go to your user/home folder. Within that folder you should see Downloads. If you do, you can add it back to the Dock just by dragging it in there. (If the Dock is on the bottom of your screen, put Downloads to the left of the Trash but to the right of the faint bar that separates folders from applications in your Dock.)

As for the Sidebar, if Downloads is in your user/home folder: In the Finder, choose Preferences (under the Finder menu). Then under the Sidebar tab, check the box next to Downloads.

Let me know if those suggestions solve your problem....

If you deleted it from your user folder, do you have a backup you can restore from?

Also accidentally deleted the downloads icon from the dock, but Mavericks not allowing me to drag the folder from my user file back into dock.

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is marked solved, less people are likely to look at it. You can link to this one. Post in the Mavericks discussion group.

Are you trying to drag it so that it is next to the trash? There is a bar that separates applications from the trash and it needs to go on the trash side of that bar.

Perfect. None of the posted solutions in any forums I came across were this specific as to where it needed to be dragged in order to "take".

Thanks!

Actually, most people use Google searches to find these kinds of solutions (as I did), but I figured it could be a cross-OS system issue, and this query was the closest to what I was looking for.

Very helpful. seems simple enough, but I was stumped. thx