Household Accounts overwritten by other Accounts on Contact record- are these household records deleted?

Question

During a recent import(update) of Contacts, we had the "Account Name" field overwritten with Organization Accounts that should have gone into Primary Affiliation. Originally, the Account field held Households as we are using the Household account model. I need to understand what the default behavior for the original household accounts is if they are no longer associated to a contact record.

I ran an export of all accounts from Data Loader to check for "IsDeleted" = true, and returned nothing, and searching in global search has not turned up any Household accounts with our naming conventions. Knowing this, it looks like we did not delete records by making this change, but the households do not appear to exist. Changing the Account also did not generate any activity history as we are not tracking this.

I can't find any documentation on either default behavior of households no longer associated to contacts, or if there is a way to restore the Account. Is there something I'm missing or failing to consider in this scenario?

Answer 1

The NPSP once deleted empty Household Account records, but that's no longer the default behavior. Now, it renames them to "Anonymous Household". From What Happens When I Delete a Contact:

When you delete a Contact ...

In the past, if the Contact was the last one in the Household Account, the Account was also deleted. This is no longer the case. The Household Account is not deleted, but is renamed to Anonymous Household.

You will most likely find your missing Households under that name.