CIRCULAR_DEPENDENCY error

Last published at: December 19th, 2025
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This article will show you how to resolve this issue.

Problem:

I'm using the parent > child hierarchy in Salesforce. When merging records, I get an error stating "CIRCULAR_DEPENDENCY - A parent account can't be the child of an account it's already a parent of".

Answer:

There are several possible solutions for this problem.

  1. Remove the parent -> child relationship for your account on the manual merge page, by selecting the empty parent id field.
  2. Remove the parent -> child relationship for all (affected) accounts in Salesforce by (mass) updating them, for example with Plauti Manipulate.
  3. Develop a 'Merge Plugin', in which you can execute apex code, which will make sure the parent-id field is emptied before the merge is fired. This is something that has to be developed by yourself.