How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce

Wondering how to merge accounts in Salesforce? This tutorial on Salesforce is about how to merge accounts in salesforce. Also, it covers these points:

  • How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce
  • How to Merge accounts in Salesforce Lightning with Different names
  • How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce Classic
  • How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce with Different Names
  • How to Mass Merge Accounts in Salesforce
  • How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce
  • How to Merge Contacts from Different Accounts in Salesforce
  • How can I Merge Accounts in Salesforce
    • How can I merge Accounts in Salesforce Lightning
    • How can I merge Accounts in Salesforce Classic

How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce

Accounts in salesforce hold the information of people who are involved in a business with you. These people can be customers, stakeholders, or individuals.

John is a manager at US enterprises, while conducting a business john observed that there are multiple users with the same name. So he decided to merge the account having less information with the one having more information.

John is a manager but he doesn’t have Delete permissions he needs to contact the system administrator of US enterprises. Using the merge option in salesforce, the admin will merge the accounts into one.

The data redundancy can affect the final reports which will ultimately affect the plans and decisions made for the company’s progress. So it is important to remove the duplicate data from the salesforce record.

Do you want to know how to merge accounts in salesforce lightning with same account name? follow these steps: –

Merge accounts in salesforce lightning with same account name

In salesforce lightning, we have to write a salesforce rule to find and merge the duplicate values from the salesforce account. For the developer users, there is a predefined rule – Standard Account Duplicate Rule.

In our case, we have created two records with the same name US Enterprise, one of the records has more details than the other one as shown in the below image. We will merge the account with less information into the one having more info.

merge accounts in salesforce lightning
Merge accounts in salesforce

Follow these steps to merge the US Enterprise accounts into one:

Step 1: Open App Launcher -> Click on View All and then search for Duplicate Record Sets.

How to merge accounts in salesforce lightning with same account name
Start Duplicate Record Sets from the App Launcher

Step 2: On the Duplicate Record Sets click on the New Button present on the top right of the screen.

How to Link Accounts in Salesforce
Add new duplicate record in salesforce

Step 3: Select the Standard_Account_Duplicate_Rule and click on the save button.

How to Link Accounts in Salesforce, How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce
Search Duplicate Rules as Standard_Account_Duplicate

Step 4: There you will see two tabs Details and Related. On clicking the Details tab New button will appear, click on it.

How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce
Select the Related tab and then click New

Step 5: Search for the duplicate account from the Records dropdown. Select the record name and click on the save button. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 till the time all the duplicate records are saved on the screen.

In our case, there are four records with the name US Enterprise which is why it is appearing 4 entries in the below image.

How to Combine Accounts in Salesforce
Duplicate values of US Enterprise

Note: You will see a red color warning while adding the same record again.

Step 6: On the right side of the screen, next to the Edit, Delete, Clone button you will notice a dropdown menu. Refresh the page in case you are not seeing that. As shown in the above image.

Step 7: From the dropdown select Compare and Merge, a new window – Potential Duplicate Records will appear. Select the checkboxes for the accounts you want to merge.

Note: Salesforce allows the merging of 3 accounts only at a time. After selecting three accounts rest of them will be grayed out.

How to merge accounts in salesforce lightning with same account name
Select the accounts in salesforce

Step 8: Click on the Next button and from here select the master record. The master record is updated with the selected values on this screen, and relationships to other items are shifted to the master record.

How to merge accounts in salesforce lightning with same account name
How to merge accounts in salesforce lightning with same account name

After this, on the next page, there will be a button for Merge. Click on the button the records will be merged. The output can be accessed from the accounts. While viewing that data you will notice that it has all the fields of other accounts.

So in this way we have learned how to merge accounts in salesforce lightning.

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How to Merge accounts in Salesforce Lightning with Different names

Suppose US Enterprise based in New York, USA is updating its database based upon a few criteria. They have decided to merge the accounts in salesforce where customers or individuals have the same phone number.

Suppose there are two accounts with the name steve and steven but both of them have the same phone number. So US Enterprise is going to assume that both are the same person.

If you are an admin and what to know how to merge accounts in salesforce lightning with different names then follow these steps: –

From the previous section of this tutorial – How to merge accounts in salesforce lightning with same name. follow steps from 1 to 4.

Step 5: Search for the user and click on the save button. Repeat the step and this time search for the user with a different account name and click save.

In our example first, we selected steve, and then steven now rest of the steps 6 to 8 can be followed from the previous section – How to merge accounts in salesforce lightning with same name.

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How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce Classic

Salesforce data may have duplicate values and these duplicate values create a hindrance in the data analysis. To fix that, the data is merged in salesforce. The Accounts have the information of the people or customers like:

  • Name
  • Phone
  • Address
  • Country, etc.

Out of this information if any of the few info is the same then that could cause ambiguity in the data. To remove that salesforce provides the Merge feature.

Do you want to learn how to merge accounts in Salesforce? Follow these steps in the salesforce classic user experience.

Step 1: Click on the Accounts from the salesforce navigation bar.

How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce Classic
How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce Classic

Step 2: In the Tools, click on Merge Accounts.

How to Merge Person Accounts in Salesforce lightning
How to Merge Person Accounts in Salesforce Lightning

Step 3: Enter a few words of the Account name and click on the Find Accounts button. The account name will appear with the check box in front of it. Check the check box, likewise select 2-3 accounts in salesforce and click on Next.

How to Merge Person Accounts in Salesforce
Select max 3 accounts to merge

Step 4: Select the Value you want to retain from this page. There is a radio button in front of each record for all the selected account names. Only marked values will retain the rest of the things that will merge.

Select the Values to Retain

Select the values in each record you want to retain and click on Merge Button. A warning prompt will pop up stating that this will merge the accounts together. Click OK to proceed.

Once the process is completed without any errors the accounts will be merged together into one primary account. So in the below image, Account Owner, Account Name and Phone values are those which have been retained earlier.

How to Merge Person Accounts in Salesforce example, How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce with Different Names
How to Merge Person Accounts in Salesforce

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How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce with Different Names

In salesforce classic, the accounts can be merged in the same way even for different account names. In the above example, we have used different account names – Dag Spratt, Davide Nathan, and Dannie Beall.

In this way, we have learned how to merge accounts in salesforce.

How to Mass Merge Accounts in Salesforce

In Salesforce, there are multiple reasons for merging the account together like merging duplicate values together, clients partnering up together, clients changing names, etc.

Mass Merge in accounts in salesforce is not every day’s thing. It happens when a company is taken over by another company and there is a coincidence that a huge number of accounts have the same details.

Mass Merge is a time taking process and salesforce does not offer any app or settings to do that. Maximum 3 accounts can be merged together in one operation so far. But there are third-party tools using which mass merging accounts in salesforce can be done.

Here is a list of a few premium software that can help you in Accounts mass merge in salesforce: –

  • XLconnector
  • ZaapIT
  • cloudingo

All of this software is paid tool and are being used by industries for mass merge accounts in salesforce. So in this way we have learned how to mass merge accounts in salesforce.

How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce

The merge Accounts option is enabled by default in salesforce, but if you cannot access it, you don’t have the Delete permission on Accounts. In case, if you are using a personal account you require Read and Delete permission.

As a System Administrator, do you want to know how to enable merge accounts in Salesforce?

If you are a system administrator and you have received a request from a user to enable merge accounts in salesforce. Then follow these steps:

Step 1: On the salesforce dashboard, click on the gear icon at the top right and from there select Service Setup.

Step 2: Search for Users from the Quick Find at the left side of the browser window.

Step 3: Inside users go to Permission Sets. Here you can either edit the existing permission set or create a new one.

How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce
How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce

Step 4: Provide a name to this permission set also select the License if any otherwise leave it to None and click Save.

How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce
Fill the name for App and Select the License type

Step 5: Since the Duplicate Record Sets are the object so its permission set is inside the Object Settings.

How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce
Select Object Settings

Step 6: Inside Object Settings, click on the Duplicate Record Sets object.

How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce
Select Duplicate Record Sets Object

Step 7: Click on the Edit button, now you can edit the object permissions. Since Duplicate Record Sets require to Delete permission so click on the Delete checkbox.

Edit and Read will be automatically selected, the person account requires Read permission. Click on the Save button.

How to Merge Person Accounts in Salesforce
Delete permission is required

Step 8: It’s time to add the permission set on the user. Go to the users -> click on the user to whom you want to assign merge permission.

Step 9: Scroll down until you see Permission Set Assignments. Click on the Edit Assignments button.

permission set assignments in salesforce lightning
Edit Assignments for Permission Set Assignments

Step 10: Select the permission name, in our case – ‘MergePermission’, and click on the Add button to shift the permission from the left box to the right box. click on the save button to apply the setting.

How to Merge Contacts from Different Accounts in Salesforce
Grant permission to the user

Now the user can check the duplicate data and merge it. In this way, we have learned how to enable merge accounts in salesforce.

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How to Merge Contacts from Different Accounts in Salesforce

To merge contacts from different accounts in salesforce you must have system administrator permissions. Only Admins can access the contacts from different accounts in salesforce.

If you are a system administrator then follow all the steps shared in the first section – How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce in this tutorial. If you are a salesforce classic user then follow the steps in How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce Classic.

Since you are an Admin so the account names will start appearing while searching on the Duplicate Record Set in salesforce. So the rest of the steps will be the same as explained so far.

How can I Merge Accounts in Salesforce?

Accounts in salesforce hold the customer, individual, or contact information that is related to business in any form. In the previous few sections, we have explained how to merge accounts in salesforce lightning and salesforce classic.

Do you want to know how can I merge accounts in salesforce quickly? Here is the summary of how to merge accounts in salesforce.

How can I Merge accounts in salesforce Lightning?

Do you want to learn how to merge accounts in salesforce lightning? Here we have shared the summarized steps to merge accounts in salesforce lightning. For detailed information read – How to merge accounts in salesforce lightning.

  1. Open Duplicate Record Set
  2. New -> Standard_Account_Duplicate_Rule -> Save
  3. Related tab -> New -> Search accounts ->
  4. Repeat step 3 to select the accounts
  5. Refresh page -> dropdown -> Compare and Merge
  6. You can select a maximum of 3 accounts from here -> Next
  7. Select the master data that will be retained rest will be merged
  8. Next -> Merge

If in doubt, read the detailed information in the above section – How to merge accounts in salesforce lightning.

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How Can Merge Accounts in Salesforce Classic?

Do you want to learn how to merge accounts in salesforce classic? Here we have shared the summarized steps to merge accounts in salesforce classic. For detailed information read – How to merge accounts in salesforce classic.

  1. Accounts -> from tools select Merge Accounts
  2. Find Accounts, maximum of three accounts can be selected -> Next
  3. Select the information you want to retain -> merge

If in doubt, read the detailed information in the above section – How to merge accounts in salesforce classic.

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Conclusion

Salesforce accounts are merged together to remove duplicate data, combine two or three accounts together, link accounts, etc. Salesforce does not support merging more than 3 accounts. Delete permission is required for performing a merge in salesforce lightning and classic.

With this, we have learned how to merge accounts in salesforce. Also, we have covered these topics in salesforce:

  • How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce
  • How to Merge accounts in Salesforce Lightning with Different names
  • How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce Classic
  • How to Merge Accounts in Salesforce with Different Names
  • How to Mass Merge Accounts in Salesforce
  • How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce
  • How to Merge Contacts from Different Accounts in Salesforce
  • How can I Merge Accounts in Salesforce
    • How can I merge Accounts in Salesforce Lightning
    • How can I merge Accounts in Salesforce Classic