TL;DR
To restore accidentally deleted Salesforce data, start with the Recycle Bin, which holds soft-deleted records for 15 days in Lightning Experience (or up to 30 days in Classic with Extended Recycle Bin Retention enabled). Once records leave the Recycle Bin, native Salesforce options narrow sharply: the paid Data Recovery Service costs $10,000 per recovery, takes 6–8 weeks, recovers data only (no metadata), and offers no guarantee of full restoration. The native Backup and Restore product is faster but only helps if it was configured before the incident. A dedicated backup tool like Flosum Backup & Archive captures both data and metadata at the field, record, and object level. Flosum customers see a 4-hour RPO, a 5-minute RTO, and 1,000-record restores in under a minute.
Key takeaways:
- The Recycle Bin keeps deleted records for 15 days by default in Lightning, with a 30-day extension available only in Classic. That’s the entire built-in recovery window.
- Recycle Bin capacity is capped at 25× your org’s data storage in MB; once full, Salesforce hard-deletes the oldest records first, sometimes before the 15-day clock runs out.
- The most common mistake admins make is assuming a Recycle Bin restore preserves every relationship. Salesforce only restores associations that haven’t changed since deletion.
- Flosum Backup & Archive delivers a 4-hour RPO, a 5-minute RTO, and granular point-in-time recovery of records, fields, files, and metadata, including parent-child relationships restored automatically.
Every Salesforce admin remembers their first “oh no” moment: the integration that wiped thousands of records overnight, the bulk update that overwrote a critical field, the colleague who hard-deleted an opportunity that hadn’t closed yet. Whether the cause is human error, a misfiring Apex trigger, or a runaway integration, accidental deletion is one of the most common and most stressful incidents in Salesforce administration.
This guide walks through exactly what to do when records disappear, in the order you should try each option. We’ll cover the native Salesforce Recycle Bin (and why its 15-day window often closes faster than expected), what happens once records are permanently deleted, and how a dedicated backup tool changes the recovery picture entirely.
How do I restore Salesforce records that were deleted recently?
Start with the Recycle Bin, but act within 15 days. When a record is soft-deleted in Salesforce, it moves to the Recycle Bin, where it stays for up to 15 days in Lightning Experience before it’s permanently purged. Salesforce Classic users can extend this to 30 days via the Extended Recycle Bin Retention setting in Setup > User Interface; this option isn’t available in Lightning.
Recovery sequence:
- Open the Recycle Bin. In Lightning, search “Recycle Bin” in the App Launcher. Toggle between My Recycle Bin (records you deleted) and Org Recycle Bin (everything deleted org-wide; requires the Modify All Data permission).
- Locate the record. Filter by record name, object type, or “deleted by” user. For bulk-deletion incidents, sort by deletion timestamp.
- Select and Undelete. Salesforce restores the record to its original state and reattempts to reattach related child records.
Two caveats matter here. First, the Recycle Bin caps at 25× your org’s data storage in megabytes. A 10 GB org holds roughly 250,000 records. Once full, Salesforce hard-deletes the oldest entries to make room for new ones, so high-volume deletion events can blow past the 15-day clock in hours. Second, Salesforce only restores record associations that haven’t changed since deletion. If a parent account was renamed or its lookup was modified, the restored child may come back orphaned.
What if my records are no longer in the Recycle Bin?
If the retention window has closed, native Salesforce options are limited. Try these in order:
- Query soft-deleted records via API. Users with View All Data and API access can query soft-deleted records in Workbench or Data Loader using SELECT Id FROM Account WHERE IsDeleted = TRUE ALL ROWS. This still only works inside the 15-day window. Once Salesforce hard-deletes a record, it leaves the database entirely.
- Confirm whether it was a hard delete. Records deleted via the Bulk API “Hard Delete” option, an Apex Database.emptyRecycleBin() call, or a manual Recycle Bin purge skip the soft-delete state altogether and are not recoverable through any native means.
- File a Data Recovery Service request as a last resort. Salesforce’s paid Data Recovery Service can recover data deleted within the last three months, but it costs $10,000 per recovery, takes 6–8 weeks to complete, covers data only (no metadata), and offers no guarantee of 100% restoration. Salesforce briefly retired the service in July 2020 before reinstating it in March 2021 after customer pushback. Salesforce’s newer Backup and Restore product, launched in late 2021, is faster and more reliable, but only if it was configured before the incident occurred.
If you don’t have a backup solution running and the Data Recovery Service window has passed, permanently deleted records are gone. Even within that window, the cost of recovery (6–8 weeks of business disruption, plus the manual rebuild of metadata, relationships, and dependent automations) almost always exceeds the cost of a backup tool that would have prevented the loss.
How does a dedicated backup tool change the recovery process?
A purpose-built backup turns a multi-week rebuild into a five-minute restore. Tools built specifically for Salesforce, like Flosum Backup & Archive, capture both data and metadata continuously or on a schedule, with point-in-time recovery that bypasses the Recycle Bin entirely. The recovery sequence is: identify the deletion in the audit log, select the snapshot from before the incident, choose granular restore (specific fields, records, or objects) or a full rollback, and execute. Flosum reattaches parent-child relationships automatically and preserves metadata context, including any custom fields, validation rules, or page layouts the deleted records depended on.
Flosum customers see a 4-hour RPO and a 5-minute RTO, with 1,000-record restores completing in under a minute, including the relational integrity that the native Recycle Bin can’t guarantee. The Composite Backup model supports full rollback restores, which several customers have cited as the reason they switched off pricier alternatives in the backup-and-archive market.
What about deleted metadata: fields, flows, and validation rules?
Deleted metadata does not go to the Recycle Bin. When a custom field is deleted, its data is removed but the field definition is retained in metadata for 15 days before permanent deletion. When a flow, validation rule, or Apex class is deleted, recovering it without a backup means manually recreating the logic from documentation, version control, or memory.
This is where many recovery efforts collapse: records can sometimes be reimported from CSV exports, but if the custom fields they belonged to no longer exist, the data has nowhere to land. Complete recovery requires both record-level and metadata-level backups in sync. This is why Flosum’s Composite Backup captures data and metadata in a single point-in-time snapshot.
Frequently asked questions
Related reading
- Restoring (Recovering) Deleted Records in Salesforce: the conceptual companion to this tactical guide
- Salesforce Recycle Bin Retention: Managing Deleted Data
- How to Prevent Accidental Data Loss in Salesforce
- 7 Common Causes of Data Loss in Salesforce
- Salesforce Metadata Backup: Protect Configuration Data
Conclusion
Salesforce gives you 15 days to undo a soft delete, and zero days after that without a backup in place. The teams that recover quickly from accidental deletion aren’t the ones with the best Salesforce Support relationship; they’re the ones who deployed a continuous, metadata-aware backup before the incident happened.
See what a 5-minute RTO and point-in-time, metadata-aware recovery look like in your own org. Request a Flosum Backup & Archive demo.
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