I have a client that is doing away with Financial Cloud. Do I need to delete all records prior to uninstalling? There are some concerns regarding related records, but it would take a long time to go through & delete all of these records.
#FinancialForce
Hey Christine,
Good news, per Salesforce's own official guidance, you don't need to manually delete all records first. When you uninstall a managed package, Salesforce automatically saves a full export of the package's data (plus related notes/attachments) as a downloadable file, available for 48 hours after uninstall, so nothing is silently lost by default.
That said, there's a real risk worth flagging: records in objects outside the package itself can still contain referential data that gets removed or deleted as part of the uninstall, this is where "related records" concerns become legitimate. Salesforce's own docs specifically warn: package uninstall deletion may also affect data contained outside of the app's direct components.
Recommended steps before uninstalling:
1. Take a full data export/backup of the org first, regardless of the package data export, this is Salesforce's own stated best practice before any uninstall
2. Test the uninstall in a sandbox first, not directly in Production
3. During the actual uninstall, keep the "Save a copy of this package's data for 48 hours" option selected (it's on by default), and download that export promptly once uninstall completes
4. Review Considerations for Relationships to understand exactly which cross-object dependencies could be affected in your specific setup, since every org's customizations differ
So: full manual deletion isn't required, but a full backup and a sandbox test run absolutely are, given the relationship risk you're already sensing.
Reference:
https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000383933&language=en_US&type=1
