Boy, was I happy when I came across this article today.
I was floundering around trying to figure out how to restore an old changeset with the missing file to no avail. These directions made it super easy for me to restore my mistakenly deleted file in TFS. Who knew it could be so simple?
The magical instructions:
If the file was deleted, and the delete commited to the server, you need to perform undelete to get it back. Easiest way is to view deleted item in Source Control Explorer (Tools->Options menu, Source Control->Visual Studio Team Foundation Server section, “Show deleted items” checkbox) and then right-click on it and perfom Undelete. Then as you check-in this change the item will be undeleted, and you can add that to the project again.
nerdjonistories 