Manage Custom Objects
Create, customize, edit, delete, or truncate custom objects to extend the functionality that standard objects, like accounts and contacts, provide.
Required Editions
| Available in: both Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience |
Available in: Contact Manager, Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, Developer, and Database.com editions Managed Packages aren’t available in Database.com. |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To create and edit custom objects: | Customize Application |
Your object management settings list the custom objects that are defined for your organization. From this list, you can:
- Define a custom object.
- Display detailed information about a custom object.
Optional features you can customize include enabling search and reports, tracking activities, tracking field history, and making the object available for the Salesforce Customer Portal.
- To update the custom object definition, click Edit and update
the desired fields.
Note The Allow Reports, Allow Activities, and Allow Search fields aren’t locked in Managed - Released and can be changed by the developer in future releases of a managed package. - To delete a custom object, click Del.
- To truncate a custom object, click Truncate.
- To view deleted custom objects, click the Deleted Objects link. The total number of deleted custom objects for your organization is listed in parentheses.
The detail page of the custom object provides information about various characteristics of the object, including standard fields, custom fields, field history tracking, relationships, custom links, search layouts, page layouts, and object limits. You can:
- Click individual items to display additional detail.
- To delete a custom field, click Del next to its name in the Custom Fields & Relationships section.
- Click More at the bottom of the page or View More below a related list to display more items.
- Click New to directly add new items.
- Deployment Status for Custom Objects and External Objects
Use the Deployment Status setting in the object definition to control when users can see and use the object and its associated custom tab, related lists, and reports. - Create a Custom Object
Track and store data that’s unique to your organization. Follow different steps, depending on which Salesforce experience you’re using. - Modify Custom Objects
Customize the user interface for your custom objects. - Custom Object Standard Fields
When you create a custom object, these default fields are automatically assigned to the object. - Delete Custom Objects
When you delete a custom object, Salesforce doesn’t add it to the Recycle Bin. Instead, deleted objects appear in the Deleted Objects list for 15 days. During this time, the object and its data are soft deleted, meaning you can restore or permanently erase (hard delete) the object and its data. After 15 days, the object and its data are automatically hard deleted. - Manage Deleted Custom Objects
Deleted custom objects appear in the Deleted Objects list for 15 days. During this time, you can choose to permanently delete the object and its data, or you can undelete them. If you undelete a custom object, some manual cleanup can be required to restore list views and other customizations that use the object. - Considerations for Truncating Custom Objects
It’s important to understand what truncating an object does before you use it to remove records. - Truncate Custom Objects
Truncating custom objects allows you to delete all of the object’s records permanently, but preserve the empty object and its metadata.

