How Your Contacts Sync with Lightning Sync

Learn how Lightning Sync handles your contacts or person accounts when you’re set up to use Lightning Sync.

Important

Starting in Winter ’21, Lightning Sync isn’t available to new Salesforce customers. If you’re on Lightning Sync, use the Lightning Sync migration assistant for a seamless transition to Einstein Activity Capture, our long-term solution for syncing contacts and events between Microsoft® or Google applications and Salesforce.

In October 2026, Microsoft 365 replaces Exchange Web Service (EWS) with Microsoft Graph API. We recommend taking this opportunity to transition from Lightning Sync to Einstein Activity Capture with Graph API or another supported connection method. See Upgrade Microsoft Office 365 Authentication Method to Microsoft Graph in Einstein Activity Capture.

• Contact Sync
  If you’re set up for Lightning Sync, learn about how we match your Microsoft or Google contacts with Salesforce contacts and accounts. Also, learn what we do when we can’t resolve a match, and how often items sync between applications.
• Person Account Sync
  Learn how and when Lightning Sync syncs person account details between Google Contacts or Microsoft® contacts and Salesforce.
• Contact Field Sync
  When you use Lightning Sync to sync contacts, fields from your Salesforce contacts are mapped to the same or similar fields in your external contacts list. Learn which fields sync and how fields are mapped between applications by default. Plus, see which Microsoft® Exchange field mappings Salesforce admins can customize.
• Sync for Contacts Restored from the Recycle Bin
  When you use Lightning Sync, contacts that are restored from the Recycle Bin automatically start syncing approximately 24 hours after restoration.
• Contact Sync Filters
  Lightning Sync contact sync filters let Salesforce admins limit which Salesforce contacts sync to users’ Microsoft or Google applications. Learn about how sync filters work differently, depending on how they’re set.