Enable and Create Custom Address Field in Salesforce

In Salesforce, the address field is disabled by default, so whenever we need to create an address field, we have to use a text or text area field. But when using a text field for an address, we don’t get address fields like street, city, postal code, and country. These fields are available only in the standard address field.

Here, I will explain how you can enable the address field from the settings, and then we will discuss how to enable and create a custom address field in Salesforce with step-by-step explanations.

Additionally, I will explain how to add values to the state and country/territory picklist fields in the custom address list in Salesforce.

Table of Contents

Address Field in Salesforce

In Salesforce, an address field represents a collection of related fields used to store address information such as street, city, state, postal code, and country.

Salesforce includes built-in address fields for standard objects such as account, contact, and lead, but custom objects cannot directly use the “address” data type. However, we create the address field by creating separate text boxes for every section of the address.

But now we can enable the custom address field for the custom object. To do that, we need to navigate to the setup, and from the user interface settings, we can enable the address field as we have in the standard objects.

Enable and Create a Custom Address Field in Salesforce

By default, we don’t have any specific address field in the fields and relationships. As you navigate to the data type to create the new address field, you will see no particular address field exists.

Enable a Custom Address Field in Salesforce

Important: Once you enable the custom address field, it cannot be disabled further. In the following step, I will explain to you how to enable a custom address field in Salesforce.

Go to Setup. On the home page, search for “User Interface” in the quick find box. As you scroll down, you will see the user interface option below the Translation Workbench. Click on the user interface.

Enable and Create a Custom Address Field in Salesforce

Next, under the Setup section, enable the “Use custom address fields” option by checking the checkbox. At last, click on the Save button.

How to Enable and Create Custom Address Field in Salesforce

In this way, we can enable the custom address field in Salesforce. Next, I will show you where we can get the address as a data type and how we can use it.

Create a Custom Address Field in Salesforce

Now, we can see the Address data type in the fields and the relationship of custom objects. Here, I will explain how to create a custom address field in a custom object in Salesforce.

Go to the Setup. Then, navigate to the “Object Manager” tab. There, you can search for an object on which you want to create a custom address field. Here, I selected a custom student object.
- Go to Fields and Relationships to create a new field and click the New button.

Then, in the data type, as you scroll down, you will see the address data type at the end. Click on it and click the Next button to proceed.

Enable a Custom Address Field in Salesforce

Provide a Field Label as per your requirement. When you click the Field Name, it will automatically populate because it’s an API name. Then, click the Next button.
- In the third step, you need to establish field-level security so that you can decide which profile users you want to display this field for.

Create a Custom Address Field in Salesforce

In the add page layout step, you can display this field only on selected layouts. Here, I only have a one-page layout. If you have different page layouts, you can add them where you want. Finally, click the Save button to create the custom address field.

Now, navigate to the object on which you created the custom address field. I will show you how to add values and create records using the field you created.
- As you open any record, you can see we created an address field, and other information, such as street, city, state, postal code, and country, is automatically created.
- This is the use of a custom address field in Salesforce.

In this way, you can enable and create a custom address field in Salesforce. However, you will not get any values in the Country/Territory and State/Province fields. We need to add those values.

Configure State and Country/Territory picklists

Now, I will explain how to add values to the state and country/territory picklist fields in the address field that we created.

Search for the state and country/territory in the quick find box and click on it. Then, you will see the Configure States, Countries, and Territories option; click on it (below step).
- After that, we need to follow two more steps. As you complete these three steps, the disabled button of Enable Picklist for Standard Address Fields will become enabled, and then you can enable picklist fields.

In the state and country/territory picklist option, you need to select the countries and states that you want to display as picklist values. We also have a default country/territory, which we can use to add a default country.
- Then click the Save button to enable the picklist field.

Configure State and Territory picklists in Salesforce

Again, as you navigate to the object on which you created the custom address field, you will see that the values that you selected in the state and country/territory setup are added to the address picklist field.

In this way, we can add values to the state and country/territory picklist fields in the custom address list in Salesforce.

Conclusion

I hope you have got an idea about the custom address field in Salesforce. In this tutorial, I explained why we need to enable the custom address field and how to do so. After enabling, I explained how to create a custom address field in a custom object, and using state and country/territory, I added picklist values to the address field.