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Salesforce Custom Address Field: Tutorial

By Christine Marshall

With 8,250 votes and 81,940 points, it was about time we were treated to the ability to create custom Address fields in Salesforce! This feature has been an idea since July 12, 2007. But as of Winter ‘23, the Salesforce Custom Address Field will be in general release.

There are many scenarios and use cases that call for a custom Address field, and until now, we’ve had no way to achieve this without creating multiple custom fields. Let’s take a look at how to enable and set up Salesforce Custom Address Fields.

*Please note that Feed Tracking will be available from the Spring ’23 release!

Salesforce Address Fields

Let’s recap on when you would want to create a custom Address field and the benefits this new field type will bring. 

If you’re an experienced admin, consultant or developer then feel free to skip ahead, as I’m sure if you have any length of experience then you’ve already come up against a requirement that calls for a custom Address field!

Salesforce Standard Address Field

We currently have the standard Address field available to us on specific standard objects including lead, account, contact, person accounts, quote, and user. 

Address is a “compound field” – in simple terms, this means the field groups together multiple individual elements into a single compound. So, “City”, “State” or “Zip Code” are examples of the individual elements that are then grouped together to form the Address field.

An Address field allows users to enter an address manually or automatically using Google lookup.

READ MORE: Autocomplete Address Fields in Salesforce

Salesforce Custom Address Field

Standard Address fields are great, but there is often a need to create more Address fields. For example, let’s imagine we have a custom object that records Airports in Salesforce, and we would like to enter the airport address. We could use a standard Address field, right? Wrong. Until now, we have had no way to add Address fields to custom objects. 

As well as fulfilling the need to create custom Address fields, the Custom Address Field has plenty of benefits:

  • Improved data accuracy – similar to the standard Address field, this new field type can be manually populated or use Google lookup to search for an address.
  • User adoption – the custom field has the same look and feel that users are familiar with.
  • Salesforce Professionals and APIs can access the individual components of the address e.g. the city or the entire address. 

How to Enable Salesforce Custom Address Fields

Before we can start creating Salesforce Custom Address Fields, we must first understand the pre-requisites and enable this feature.

Step 1: Configure State and Country/Territory Picklists

The guidance around the need for State and Country/Territory Picklists has been unclear at best – let’s attempt to clarify things a bit here.

A Custom Address Field uses picklists for “State” and “Country” fields in the address. So, where do the options in these picklists come from? State and Country/Territory Picklists

Configuring State and Country/Territory Picklists simply means defining what states and countries are available to your users to choose from when creating addresses. Simple! 

Using State and Country/Territory Picklists can help improve data quality because it makes data input easier and provides a standardized list, so you don’t get multiple values for the same thing – US, USA, United States, United States of America… you get the idea.

You don’t have to use State and Country/Territory Picklists for the standard Address field – if this feature is not set up, the fields behave like “text” fields and your users can enter whatever value they like. 

The States, Countries and Territories you configure will only affect standard Address fields if you finish the setup by pressing Enable Picklists for Address Fields. This is important to remember because Custom Address Fields require you to configure States, Countries, and Territories, but they do not require you to actually press the button Enable Picklists for Address Fields

If you press Enable Picklists for Address Fields, State and Country/Territory Picklists will impact your standard Address fields. If you want to use Custom Address Fields but do not want to use State and Country/Territory Picklists with your standard Address fields, do not click Enable Picklists for Address Fields! 

Moving on… let’s configure States, Countries, and Territories. If you simply want to use the default values (239 countries and territories already set up by Salesforce), then you can skip this step. If you would like to limit what your users will see, for example perhaps your company is solely based in America so there is no need for your users to see other countries, then click 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

You can add new Countries or Territories as needed.

To control which States are available, click Edit next to the Country and on the following screen you’ll be able to mark States Active or Visible. Hit Save when you’re done. 

Hit Save when you’re done and head back to State and Country/Territory Picklists. 

You could carry on and do steps 2-5, but you don’t need to if you don’t plan to use State and Country/Territory Picklists with standard Address fields. Let’s skip ahead and enable Salesforce Custom Address Fields.

Step 2: Enable “Use Custom Address Fields”

Please note that once enabled, Custom Address Fields cannot be disabled.

Head over to Setup > User Interface > User Interface – it’s hiding near the bottom! If your Salesforce is like mine, it won’t be visible unless you scroll way down or minimize some of the collapsible sections.

Tick Use custom address fields and click Save.

How to Create a Salesforce Custom Address Field

Head over to Setup > Object Manager > [Object] > Fields & Relationships. Click New.

Choose the Address field type. 

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

You’ll now see your new Custom Address Field on your page layout! Notice that you will select from a picklist for CountryCode and StateCode – this is what you configured via State and Country/Territory Picklists.

There are a few differences when you compare custom and standard Address fields. For example, the individual component names such as Street or City appear in brackets. In addition, an Address field that uses State and Country/Territory Picklists will show the CountryCode before the Street, City, and so on. 

Considerations

Salesforce Custom Address Fields do not support all functionality. Be sure to check out the Custom Address Fields Requirements and Limitations on Salesforce Help for the full details. 

There are also a few key considerations that I would like to call out:

  • Each Custom Address Field counts as nine custom fields.
  • 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.
  • You cannot use Custom Address Fields in Dynamic Forms.
  • Lead Conversion is not supported.
  • Approval Processes are not supported.
  • The Mass Update Addresses tool is not supported.
  • The Data Import Wizard is not supported.
  • Flow Screen Input Component: Address is not supported.

Summary

What do you think of the new Custom Address Field from Salesforce? I think it’s a great step forward and, over time, we are sure to see many of the current limitations addressed. 

READ MORE: 10 Hottest Winter ’23 Features

Resources

The Author

Christine Marshall

Christine is the Courses Director at Salesforce Ben. She is an 11x certified Salesforce MVP and leads the Bristol Admin User Group.

Comments:

    JakubS
    October 26, 2022 10:12 am
    Any experience on this - is it better to enable this Custom address type or rather setup multiple custom fields for capturing address for example on some custom object (for example we think of using custom object for Contracts, as the standard one is quite limited..).
    Christine Marshall
    October 26, 2022 10:45 am
    The purpose of the Custom Address Field is to remove the need to create multiple fields to store address information. The new custom address field type should be a better alternative with a lot of benefits.
    Maelle
    March 13, 2023 11:33 am
    I think the last consideration 'Flow Screen Input Component: Address is not supported.' is now solved by SF as per known issue that was fixed as per https://issues.salesforce.com/issue/a028c00000gAyQBAA0/in-spring20-dependent-state-picklist-values-are-not-populating-after-the-selection-of-country-picklist-value-in-address-component. But I still have problems when trying to create a new record via FLOW which is copy pasting an address field to another address field (I have a an Address field on Case which I use to populate the address on a new Account, based on the input from the Case and it does not seem to work).
    Mayur
    December 05, 2023 5:25 am
    Used custom address field in my org. And I am trying to fetch country name from that address field in PDF Butler but I am not able to do that. As this address field CountryCode field but not Country Name. Did you observe this limitation or there is any workaround to this?

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