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jerrykjerryk 

How to identify custom fields not actively used in the different record types

Hi,

we reached the limit for creating new custom fields. Now I am sure a number of the custom fields we once created are not used and/or displayed at all in the different record types. How could I identify those?

Regards,

Jerry

Best Answer chosen by Admin (Salesforce Developers) 
dev_jhdev_jh

Hi Jerry,

 

Here is an idea. You can extract the data using DataLoader and see, from Excel, which fields only have NULL values. Irrespective of them being in a specific Page Layout you can easily start a discussion from there with the Business as to which ones are worth keeping which ones aren´t. Hope it helps,

 

J

All Answers

dev_jhdev_jh

Hi Jerry,

 

Here is an idea. You can extract the data using DataLoader and see, from Excel, which fields only have NULL values. Irrespective of them being in a specific Page Layout you can easily start a discussion from there with the Business as to which ones are worth keeping which ones aren´t. Hope it helps,

 

J

This was selected as the best answer
zen_njzen_nj

the way we did this was a bit painful, but essentially you would run reports against a set of fields and then in your report criteria, choose something like where:

 

column A equals "" (blank/null)

or

column B equals "" (blank/null)

.

.

.

 

And this way you'll find which fields/columns don't have any values in it (and so can be assume has never been used). The other field I always put in is the Last Modified Date/Time field so that if  some of the results show a small set of data where column A does have values (i.e. say 5 out of 2000 entries showed A with a value), you can use the Last Modified Date/Time to see when  those 5 records were last updated. And if they were updated say over 2 years ago, then it's a good chance that column A was used at some point and then discontinued (whether because the record type was discontinued or some other field replaced it)

jerrykjerryk

Thank you for your replies. I see, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to do this. Anyway, helpful discussion. Have a nice day!

Jerry Klein :smileywink: