Identify and segment restored contacts after deletion

Smart CRM & Sales Hub CRM
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By mistake, over 1,000 contact records were deleted from an account in HubSpot. They are still in the recycling bin, but it’s not possible to restore them because after they were deleted, a list with those same contacts was re-imported. HubSpot doesn’t allow restoring the previous records since the email already exists.

Here’s the process I’m planning to follow:

  1. Export the segment and update the emails by adding an identifier to the email address.
  2. Import using the HubSpot ID and update only the email address.
  3. Restore the contacts.
  4. Review the imported data to identify which contacts need to be merged or deleted.

My question is: Is there any way to identify the restored contacts and create a segment with them, or any property that could be used to build a segment so I don’t have to review them one by one?

All of them may have different create dates, and there’s no property on the deleted record that allows filtering exclusively for those contacts to make the review faster.

It’s also important to mention that this account doesn’t have Data Hub Pro or Enterprise, so batch merging isn’t an option.

If anyone has suggestions on how to make this process more efficient, I’d really appreciate your input!

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Hi @ValeriaLMG
Thank you for reaching out to the Community!
I’d like to invite some community members who are subject matter experts to join this conversation.
@karstenkoehler @Jigar_Thakker @Shubham_Sharma - Would you be able to share any insights on this? Your expertise would be greatly appreciated.
Best,
Victor

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Thank you, Victor!

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Hi @ValeriaLMG ,
You’re very welcome! Glad I could help get the conversation started—hopefully, the experts can jump in with some useful suggestions for your case.

Best,
Victor

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Hi @ValeriaLMG,

Could you explain in a bit more detail where the issue lies exactly? From a first glance, if the contacts were re-imported and now exist again in the CRM, what exactly would be missing?

In general, no, as far as I know there is no property that would document whether a contact was previously deleted. The contacts will however have a timestamp in “Last modified date” that corresponds to the restoration time, so that’s how you could identify them.

Best regards

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I came up with a method for this, even though it might sound a bit dumb. In order to clear out the contacts with the same emails but wrong segments/info and the like. So, what I did was export all the contacts from the import, making sure the Record ID was noted. Then, using Claude Cowork, I removed precisely one letter from each email in the segment. After that, you reimport, making sure you click for record ID merge. Once the modified emails are in, you can restore the previously deleted records from your recycling bin, wait a day for the duplicates to populate, and then bulk merge from the duplicates finder. I would love to know if there’s a better way, but this method works at least.