Guidelines for Deleting Accounts

Important You see the Delete option only if you have permission to delete an account. The Delete option is available on the account’s detail page and on the account list view in Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. If you don’t see the Delete option, you don’t have permission to delete the account. Ask your Salesforce admin for help.

Deleted accounts are moved to the Recycle Bin, along with these related items. If you restore an account from the Recycle Bin, related items are also restored, except the following.

• Contacts
• Opportunities
• Orders
• Contracts (if they're not activated)
• Activities
• Notes
• Attachments
• Portal roles and groups (if all portal users in the account are disabled)
• Partner relationships
• Relationship group members

• Relationship group members in certain cases
• Portal roles and groups
• Scorecard associations

If any of the following conditions apply, you can’t delete an account.

• A case is related to the account
• You don’t have the Delete permission on accounts
• You aren’t the account’s owner, above the account’s owner in the role hierarchy, or a Salesforce admin
• When a contact on the account is related to an order via the Bill to Contact lookup field

If any of the following conditions apply, you can’t delete a partner account. To delete an account with closed–won opportunities that you own, you have to delete the closed–won opportunities along with the account. To delete an account associated with a channel program membership, you have to delete the membership first.

• Child records, activated contracts, or related opportunities owned by other users are related to the account
• Related contacts enabled as customer or partner users are related to the account
• A channel program membership is related to the account

Note You don’t need the Delete permission on related records.