How is bounty awarded when a question already has an accepted answer?

Question

I'm a bit unclear regarding the bounty policy. I gather that a bounty is automatically awarded to the accepted answer (if the "bounty"er didn't manually award the bounty.)

Does the system distinguish between an answer that had already been accepted prior to the bounty being awarded? I ask this because sometimes I've accepted an answer at the time because I thought it was a good answer. I might later return to the question and decide to award a bounty because I'd like a better answer or some more info.

Would it make sense, in this situation to "unaccept" the answer, temporarily?

Answer 1

From the help page about bounties:

If you do not award your bounty within 7 days (plus the grace period), the highest voted answer created after the bounty started with a minimum score of 2 will be awarded half the bounty amount (or the full amount, if the answer is also accepted). If two or more eligible answers have the same score (their scores are tied), the oldest answer is chosen. If there's no answer meeting those criteria, no bounty is awarded to anyone.

If the bounty was started by the question owner, and the question owner accepts an answer posted during the bounty period, and the bounty expires without an explicit award then we assume the bounty owner liked the answer they accepted and award it the full bounty amount at the time of bounty expiration.