When someone sends you an Excel sheet and says, “Can you put this into Salesforce?” you don’t always want to spend time creating an object and every single field by hand.
That’s exactly where Create a Custom Object from a Spreadsheet in Salesforce Lightning helps.
You upload a spreadsheet, Salesforce builds the object, creates the fields, and can even load the data for you in one go.
In this Salesforce tutorial, I will explain how to import custom objects through a spreadsheet in Salesforce Lightning.
Custom Objects through Spreadsheet in Salesforce
In Salesforce, we use custom objects to track and store data unique to the organization. If we prefer not to create a custom object and its fields manually, we can use a spreadsheet to add them and populate all their record data.
In this method, we create a spreadsheet and ensure that the file you import to add records in the custom object is mapped correctly to the custom object’s field names.
The image below references the CSV file I used to insert the custom object in my Salesforce environment.
What “Custom Object from Spreadsheet” Really Does
When you create a custom object from a spreadsheet, Salesforce does three big things for you:
- Creates the custom object itself (with label, plural label, API name, description, etc.).
- Creates fields on that object using the columns in your spreadsheet.
- Optionally imports the records from the spreadsheet into that new object.
Think of it as a shortcut that combines:
- Custom Object creation
- Custom Fields creation
- Data Import
All in a single wizard.
This is ideal when:
- You have a brand‑new dataset that doesn’t fit any existing object.
- You want to prototype quickly (for a PoC or a pilot).
- Business users are comfortable working in spreadsheets but want to move to Salesforce.
If you’re dealing with an existing object (like Leads, Accounts, Opportunities), this feature isn’t what you need; you’d instead use the Data Import Wizard or Data Loader.
Create a Custom Object from a Spreadsheet in Salesforce
To create a custom object from a spreadsheet in Salesforce Lightning, navigate to the setup page and follow the steps below.
- Click the Object Manager tab on the Salesforce Lightning setup page.
- In the Object Manager tab, click the Create dropdown and select Custom Object from Spreadsheet.
- In the next window, you can log in either with Salesforce credentials or with Sandbox login credentials. In this example, I will log in with the Salesforce credentials.
- Click on the Allow button to give permission.
- In this step, we have to select the spreadsheet; we can upload a csv/excel file, a Google spreadsheet, or an Office 365 sheet. Upload the CSV file that you have created with the available options.
- Now, we will define the new custom object. For that, enter the Label and the Plural Label for the custom object, then enter the Object description and click the Finish button.
- When we click the Finish button, the custom object import starts. After completing it, we can see the import overview in the next window.
- To view the custom object, navigate to the Object Manager tab. There you can view the object we imported from the spreadsheet.
This way, we can import and create a custom object in the Salesforce Lightning experience using a spreadsheet, following the steps above.
Conclusion
In this Salesforce tutorial, we learned how to add custom objects using a spreadsheet in Salesforce Lightning. By following the steps above, you will be able to create a spreadsheet with data for the custom object records and create custom objects using a spreadsheet in Salesforce.
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Abhijeet is a skilled Salesforce developer with experience in developing and integrating dashboards, data reports, and Salesforce applications. He is also skilled at optimizing processes and flow automation processes, coding, and executing complex project architecture. Read more about us | LinkedIn Profile.
