How to Restore Data Using the Salesforce Weekly Data Export Service

Need to restore data after accidental deletion or corruption in Salesforce? The Salesforce Weekly Data Export feature provides basic recovery capabilities by creating downloadable CSV files of your records on a weekly or monthly basis. While it's a starting point for data restore, this native tool has significant limitations for business-critical environments—particularly around recovery speed, metadata support, and data loss windows.

This blog post guides you through the seven steps for recovering your Salesforce data from the Salesforce Weekly Data Export. 

What is Salesforce Weekly Data Export? (And What It Can't Do)

Before we jump into how you can recover your Salesforce data from the Salesforce Weekly Data Export, let’s set expectations about what you can achieve by following the steps below. This starts with summarizing what the Salesforce Weekly Data Export actually is - and isn’t. 

Mainly, Salesforce Weekly Data Export is NOT a backup. A backup is a complete copy of all data, stored independently from the source system (such as Salesforce), which can be used to restore all data to its original state if data gets lost or corrupted. An export, like what Salesforce Weekly Data Export provides, is a snapshot of particular data that can be viewed or transferred. 

Because Salesforce Weekly Data Export does not include the underlying configuration, settings, or metadata, recovering data using the steps below or ANY steps can’t fully restore your Salesforce data. 

When should you use Weekly Data Export for data restore?

Use Weekly Export for small-scale, non-urgent recoveries where you can tolerate manual effort and up to 7 days of data loss. For business-critical systems and large enterprises, a more comprehensive backup and restore solution is required to prevent downtime and ensure complete recovery.

Now that you know what to expect, let’s get you started recovering your data from the Weekly Data Export.

7 Steps to Recovering Lost Data Using the Salesforce Data Weekly Export Service

1. Evaluate the Impact of Data Loss/ Corruption
   • Before attempting recovery, determine the scope of damage: 
     
     • Which objects were affected? (Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, etc.) 
     • When did the incident occur? (Critical: Weekly Export may not contain recent changes) 
     • Are there cascade delete relationships that removed child records? 
   • Use audit logs, reports, and Salesforce Workbench to assess the full extent of data loss.

1. Identify and Extract Missing Data
   • Compare data from the most recent Salesforce Weekly Export with current records. Use Excel’s VLOOKUP function and SOQL queries to detect discrepancies in parent and child objects.
2. Create Restore Files for Lost Records
   • Organize extracted data into separate CSV files for each object. Ensure parent records (Accounts, Products, Campaigns) are restored before related child objects (Opportunities, Contacts, Tasks, Campaign Members).
3. Generate an External ID Field
   • In Salesforce Setup, create a custom External ID field on each object to maintain record relationships during reimport. This ensures child records link correctly to restored parent records.
4. Format Data for Import
   • Adjust column headers in CSV restore files to align with Salesforce Data Loader requirements. Replace standard IDs with the newly created External ID field for accurate matching.
5. Restore Data Using Salesforce Data Loader
   • Start by inserting parent records first, then upsert child records using the External ID field to preserve relationships. Resolve any errors related to missing fields or validation rules.
6. Validate and Confirm Data Restoration
   • Run Salesforce reports to verify that all records and relationships have been correctly restored. Check for missing records, orphaned children, or formatting issues that require correction.

Why Weekly Data Export Falls Short for Business-Critical Systems 

Beyond the technical limitations, Weekly Export creates organizational risks: 

• RPO (Recovery Point Objective) of 7 days: Any business making updates to Salesforce more frequently than once a week can lose nearly a week of data
• RTO (Recovery Time Objective) of 8+ hours: Manual recovery process delays business operations 
• High error rate: Excel-based restoration increases risk of data integrity issues 
• No compliance support: DORA, SOX, and GDPR often require daily backups with audit trails 

For comparison, automated backup and restore solutions offer: 

• RPO of 5 minutes to 24 hours 
• RTO of minutes to hours (not days) 
• Complete metadata + relationship preservation 
• Compliance-ready audit logs and encryption

It’s important to note that while Salesforce Weekly Data Export is a starting point for backing up data, recovering data from this export can be a challenge for a few reasons:

• You can only manually export data once every seven or 29 days
• It doesn’t backup metadata
• Exports must be manually downloaded within 48 hours after Salesforce sends you the email. After that, it’s deleted.
• There are file size limitations
• The extracted zip files are not encrypted

Now that you understand how to recover data using Salesforce Weekly Data Export (and what its limitations are), it’s probably a suitable time to explore Salesforce data backup and restore options that are more comprehensive and can fully recover your entire Salesforce data model. 

The Weekly Data Export is a start, but if Salesforce data is important to your small- or mid-sized organization, you’ll need a more advanced solution to adequately protect your data and ensure you can fully restore it. Considerations include:

• Protecting data, files and metadata
• Ability to quickly restore data and files in a targeted manner
• Insights into backup activities like which data was created, modified, and deleted  
• A robust platform with advanced security features to safeguard your backups

Odaseva can help your organization achieve this with Backup and Restore Professional Edition. Learn more and request a 30 day free trial here.

Facing enterprise Salesforce data protection challenges? Explore our enterprise solutions.

Enterprises running on Salesforce have additional challenges when it comes to protecting and managing Salesforce data, including:

• Complex data models 
• Large Data Volumes (LDV)
• RTO policies that mandate frequent backups
• Multiple Salesforce Orgs
• Regulatory requirements (DORA, GDPR, HIPAA, etc)
• Security requirements like end-to-end encryption

If these sound familiar, Odaseva was designed and built to help you.

Protecting and managing SaaS data becomes extremely complex in the enterprise. Odaseva has specialized in this 2012, with the Odaseva Enterprise Data Platform that’s purpose-built for enterprises running on Salesforce. Large enterprises, including Global Fortune 500 companies like Schneider Electric and Michelin, trust Odaseva to navigate the growth and security of their business-critical data. Our platform helps customers ensure business continuity if a data disaster strikes, compliance with regulations like GDPR and DORA, and streamlined governance. 

Learn more about Odaseva Backup and Restore for enterprises here and request a demo today.