Picklist Limitations

Other Limits for Standard Picklists

For standard picklists, each value can have up to 255 characters, not including line breaks and returns. This limit applies to single-select and multi-select picklists.

Limits for Custom Picklists

Inactive and active picklist value limits:

• Restricted picklists have a combined active and inactive limit of 1,000 values.
• Unrestricted picklists have a limit of 1,000 active values, and bound unrestricted picklists have a limit of 4,000 inactive values.
• All newly created unrestricted picklists are bound to the 4,000 inactive value limit by default.

Custom single-select picklist limits:

• Up to 1,000 values.
• Up to 255 characters per value.

Custom multi-select picklist limits:

• Up to 500 values.
• Up to 255 characters per value.
• Users can select up to 100 values at a time on a record.

Global picklist value set limits:

• Global picklist value sets have a combined active and inactive value limit of 1,000.
• You can have up to 500 picklist global value sets in an org.
• There’s no limit on the number of custom picklists that use global picklist value sets.
• If you apply a global picklist value set to more than 13 different objects, you can deactivate values from the picklist value set, but you can’t replace any picklist values or delete values from the set.

Functional Limitations for Custom Picklists

• You can make a custom single-select picklist field into a restricted picklist only if the picklist has fewer than 1,000 values (or entries). You can make a custom multi-select picklist field into a restricted picklist only if the picklist has fewer than 500 values (or entries). A restricted picklist’s values are limited to only those values defined by a Salesforce admin, which prevents users from loading redundant or erroneous values through the API.
• Global picklist value sets are always restricted picklists, which preserves data integrity. Global value sets are shared across objects. Reuse the value set for any custom picklist field.
• For custom picklist fields that use a global picklist value set, you can change from a single-select to multi-select picklist and vice versa. But you can’t change the picklist to a different field type, such as checkbox, currency, or text.
• You can’t undo a custom picklist field’s association with a global value set. To use a different global value set or different individual values in a picklist, delete the custom picklist field and replace it with a new picklist.

Functional Limitations for Multi-Select Custom Picklists

Multi-select picklists have implications when you work with that picklist data in other areas of Salesforce. If possible, use dependent picklists or another field type.

• Data—Data is stored in the object as a semicolon-separated list of values. For example, if you have a Regions multi-select picklist, the selected values appear like this in the UI: Midwest;Southwest;Northwest;West. The way the values are stored can pose challenges when you want to update data via the API or import data. For example, let’s say some distributors now handle the Northeast region, and you want to update those distributors via data import. If the data that you import only includes the Northeast region, then that’s the only region that’s updated in the records. Instead, your import data must include the regions that the distributor currently supports in addition to the new region.

  When you use the UI to add a multi-select picklist value, it validates that the value doesn't exist. When you use the API to add a multi-select picklist value, the system doesn't perform this validation. Therefore, the same picklist value can be stored multiple times in a multi-select picklist if that value is added from both the UI and from the API. If you add picklist values via the API, be sure to add logic to check for duplicate values in the picklist.

• Automation and Integration—To use multi-select picklist values in an Apex trigger, you must write code to parse the semicolon-delimited string. In a flow, you can’t update a multi-select picklist by using the field update element. However, you can use a multi-select picklist as part of a flow, but similar to Apex triggers, you must parse the values from the semicolon-delimited string of values.
• Formulas—Only certain formula fields support multi-select picklists, but workarounds are available. For example, to copy a multi-select picklist field value from one record to another, use the INCLUDES function. See Tips for Working with Picklist and Multi-Select Picklist Values in Formulas.
• Reports—When you include a multi-select picklist field in a report, the data appears as a semicolon-delimited string like it does in the UI. Using picklist values to group data in a report also has some limitations. For example, let’s say you want to group by region and list all the distributors in each region. If you group on the Region field, the groups would look something like:

  Midwest;Southwest;Northwest;West
  Northeast;Mid-Atlantic
  West