Adding Emails to Multiple Salesforce Records Using the Salesforce for Outlook Side Panel (Retired — Use Outlook Integration)

Important: Salesforce for Outlook Has Been Retired

:warning: Salesforce for Outlook (SFO) was retired in June 2023. This article describes legacy functionality that is no longer supported. Customers currently using Salesforce for Outlook should migrate to the Salesforce Outlook Integration add-in. See the Additional Resources section for migration guidance.

Overview (Legacy — SFO Version 3.0 and Later)

With Salesforce for Outlook (SFO) version 3.0 and newer, users could add emails to multiple Salesforce records that accept Tasks — including Accounts, Person Accounts, Opportunities, Custom Objects, and Cases — not just Contacts.
Prior to this capability, users were limited to adding emails to only one Task-accepting record per email.

Behavior Notes

• Before Spring '15, Salesforce Administrators could allow up to 50 Contacts to be related to a Task or Event by enabling Allow Users to Relate Multiple Contacts to Tasks and Events from Setup > Customize > Activities > Activity Settings (Classic) or Setup > Feature Settings > Sales > Activity Settings (Lightning Experience).
• From Spring '15 onward, the above setting was not required if the Side Panel multi-record permission was enabled. Users could associate emails to multiple records directly.
• Salesforce creates a separate Task for each record to which a user adds an email.
• When associating a Task to a Contact and Opportunity, the Related To and Name lookup fields will not be populated with the corresponding Contact and Opportunity when this permission is enabled.
• If the permission is later disabled, previously associated records remain intact. However, users will no longer be able to associate Tasks to multiple records going forward.