There might be times when you accidentally misplace or delete important data in Salesforce. Can you ever restore these deleted data? Luckily, Salesforce provides a way to recover your lost data. This article will cover troubleshooting the recovery of lost or deleted Salesforce data.
Initial Steps
You have to confirm if the data you need to recover is truly gone. Follow these steps first before attempting to recover the data:
- Ask your admins if changes have been made affecting your record visibility or if the data has been out of your view due to its transfer to another user.
- Use Global Search to find a record in a related list. If you find it, the data could be reparented to a different record.
What to Do Next
If none of the steps above proved to be effective, you must check if you can still recover data through other locations.
- Check the Recycle Bin and select All Recycle Bin on the drop-down menu. Manually sort and search the data you need. If you see it, select the data and click Undelete.
- Request a user with View All Data on object and API access to check for the missing data in Data Loader. He will use the Export All function to do this.
If a backup is found, the data may now be restored using the following data import tools:
- Data Loader – for bulk data that needs to be restored. The tool can support up to 5 million records.
- Data Import Wizard – for a smaller amount of data to be restored. The tool has a limit of 50,000 records.
Data Recovery Service
You can also use the Data Recovery Service as a last resort if your search using the steps above proved to be unfruitful. This Salesforce service is formerly known as Data Restoration.
Using the Data Recovery Service can help you recover lost data from up to 3 months from the present date. Salesforce uses a manual process to do this and may take 6-8 weeks on a minimum to yield results. This service comes with additional charges for your organization.
You may request to use this service by logging a case first with Salesforce Support, citing that data have been irreversibly deleted and cannot be recovered by your org. Next, once the case is acknowledged, log another case indicating “Can you please perform a Data Recovery?” on the subject line. An agent will be in touch with your org to confirm and give you pricing details and instructions on how to pay through credit card or purchase number.
Summary
You can utilize the steps outlined above to help you restore important data that has gone missing or accidentally deleted. If none of the self-help steps work, it’s time for you to ask help from Salesforce’s Data Recovery Service. They will commence a manual search of your org records and help you restore records from 3 months back from the current date you summoned them in.