Convert Business Accounts to Person Accounts

Convert business accounts and associated contacts to person accounts using data export and import tools.

Tip We strongly recommend testing your conversion in a sandbox before importing altered data into your production organization. For more information on sandboxes, visit Sandbox Overview in the Salesforce online help.

1. Review the considerations for converting business accounts to person accounts.
2. Back up your data.
3. Ensure that all accounts and contacts to be converted meet the prerequisites listed in Prepare Business Accounts to Be Converted to Person Accounts.
4. Get the Record ID for the Person Account Record Type that you want to use for the converted records.
5. Using the Data Loader, export the account records you want to convert.
6. Open the export file using a tool such as Microsoft Excel ©.
7. In the export file, delete all records that you don’t want included in the conversion.
8. In the export file, create a column for Record Type. Then insert the applicable Record ID for the Person Account Record Type for each account you want to convert.
9. If you want to preserve values for the fields that are deleted during conversion, create custom fields for each original field you want to retain.
   The custom field can be on the Account or Contact object, but the Contact object is recommended.
10. Use the Save As function of your editing tool to the export file as a .csv (comma separated value) file.
11. Import the file using the Data Loader.
    If you created custom fields to preserve the deleted field values, map the deleted fields to your custom fields.