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Creating A Custom Address Field
Creating A Custom Address Field

Steps necessary for enabling custom address fields in Salesforce

Engineering Swantide avatar
Written by Engineering Swantide
Updated over a year ago

Salesforce currently has the standard Address field available to users on specific standard objects including Lead, Account, Contact, Person Accounts, Quote, and User. The address field is a combination of individual elements, like 'city', 'state' and 'zip code'. Standard Address fields are great, but there is often a need to create more Address fields. Below are steps towards creating custom address fields on various objects, as well as related use cases and considerations.

Steps Fore Creating Custom Address Fields

  1. Configure State and Country/Territory Picklists

    1. Navigate to Setup -> Data -> State and Country/Territory Picklists

    2. Configure States, Countries and Territories (You can choose a default (if you like) and tick the relevant Countries/Territories to make them Active and Visible)

  2. Enable “Use Custom Address Fields"

    1. Navigate to Setup -> User Interface -> User Interface

    2. Scroll down to the 'Setup' section

    3. Check 'use custom address fields'

  3. Create Custom Address Field

    1. Navigate to Setup -> Object Manager -> [Object] -> Fields & Relationships. Click New.

    2. Choose the Address field type

    3. Give it a Field Label, Description, Help Text, and assign it to the relevant profiles and page layouts as required

    4. Click 'Save'

Use Cases For Enabling Custom Addresses

Custom addresses allow for the precise capture of distinct address types, such as personal or multiple addresses for a single record. They also accommodate unique industry requirements, address validation, geolocation data, international formatting, and integration with external systems. In cases where Salesforce's default address fields fall short, custom addresses offer the flexibility to align the CRM system with an organization's unique address-related demands. Below are a few sample use cases/benefits of enabling custom addresses:

  1. Capture Custom Address Information: Salesforce's standard address fields often capture company or organization addresses. Creating custom address fields allows you to capture additional or more specific address information, such as a personal or residential address for a contact.

  2. Distinguishing Between Multiple Addresses: In some scenarios, you may need to capture multiple addresses for a single record (i.e. business and personal addresses). For example, you might want to store both a billing address and a shipping address for an account.

  3. Enhanced Data Accuracy and Reporting: By creating custom address fields, you can ensure that the data you're capturing is accurate and consistent. It also makes it easier to create reports and dashboards that are specific to certain address information.

  4. Integration/Validation with External Systems: Custom address fields can be essential when integrating Salesforce with external systems that use different address structures or require specific address data for synchronization.

  5. International Address Formats: In some international scenarios, Salesforce's standard address fields may not accommodate specific address formatting requirements. Custom fields can be configured to meet these international formatting standards

Considerations & Limitations

  • State and Country/Territory Picklists:

    • If State and Country/Territory Picklists are enabled, you can’t specify separate picklist values for standard and custom address fields.

    • If State and Country/Territory Picklists aren’t enabled, those picklists are enabled for custom address fields with Custom Address Fields. By default, all countries, territories, and their states and provinces are visible to users.

  • Field Limitations:

    • You cannot rearrange the order of the components e.g. put Street before Country.

    • You cannot rename the components e.g. CountryCode or StateCode.

    • You cannot remove the brackets (parenthesis) around the component names e.g. (CountryCode).

    • You cannot mark a Custom Address Field as required (universally required) but you could make it required via the Page Layout or a Validation Rule, if needed.

  • Custom Address Fields and Org Limits: For custom compound fields, each component counts as one custom field toward your org’s allocations. Thus each custom address field counts as nine custom fields.

  • Many features aren’t supported with custom address fields:

    • The conversion of address data into custom fields of type Address from custom fields of other types.

    • Approvals

    • Data Import Wizard

    • Fuzzy matching

    • Composite API

    • Field Encryption

    • Field Sets

    • Flow Screen Input Component: Address

    • Lead Conversion

    • Lightning Web Components

    • Mass Update Addresses

    • Merge Fields

    • Visualforce pages

    • Workflow

  • Custom address fields can't be disabled

Related Articles
Field Configuration in Swantide
Creating Custom Fields Outside of Swantide App
Validate US Billing Country and State Codes on Account Records
Enable State and Country/Territory Picklists
Custom Task & Event Fields
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