So how did you delete the layer? Did you accidentally hit the delete key then click yes to the 'are you sure' question thinking you were deleting the polygon, rather than the whole layer? Either way, there's no way of retrieving a deleted layer that I know of, other than restoring from backup. An undo feature would be nice...

Dash the rain, I could be outside. Instead I am re-attaching polygons.
If someone can tell me how to remove the delete key from Darwyn's keyboard I would be grateful.
In the future when adding 'associated locations' to polygons can we have recorder miss out the 'Find location name' box and pop straight to the location hierarchy. It is becoming a bit of a pain selecting the correct location from the text list - we have many locations named the same as the parish.
Of course if Darwyn wouldn't delete layers in the first place. . . .:P

We don't use it much, either, Charles. We do, however maintain a Location hierarchy based upon Parishes which matches well with our Parish-based paper filing systems, Parish-based Community Warden systems and District SLA services. As a home user I do a similar thing but at Vice-County level.
Each new Location (e.g. imported stuff) gets dumped into the right parish (select location|ctrlX|right click Find on map|click parish polygon|Associated locations|Paste|End).
That's about as complex as we go with the Recorder "mapping" (Hannah used to call it that, not really a GIS).
Our serious GIS stuff is done by other means - don't want to go into that, there's enough to be said on it to fill a dozen conferences.
Thanks for your support and sympathy, I think it's now the fourth time we've done that (but the first time they have been able to blame me)

Just back for 10 days leave & had a good chuckle (& sympathy too, of course :o ) over this thread. Regarding reassociating locations, a wee tip I'd suggest here is twofold:

Once you've got a fairly fixed list of associated locations, make a rucksack with said places & export it with no obs but with subsite options on. Screw up a layer?
No problem: Import the polygons first then import the saved ruckack export

The second thing I did when setting up the locations to get around with a future hassle is actually record which polygon ID's match to which location/comprtament. To elaborate, we've got 1500 associated locations so it was no mean task, however you can then use the map navigation tool to find your unlinked polygons far faster.

The other thing I'll pop in here is include mushroom cloud button with the line " how confident are you that you'll get things back once you press this?"

Cheers now, Rob