Guidelines for Working with Notes

General Guidelines for Notes

• To create a note associated with a record, you must have read access to the record.
• To edit an existing note associated with a record, you need edit access to the note.
• To delete a note, you must be the owner of the note.
• You can relate notes to custom objects, but not custom settings, when using Salesforce. To relate a note to custom settings, use the ContentDocumentLink API.
• If Notes is disabled, you can’t access notes that were created with it.
• Only notes taken with the Notes related list appear on the Notes tab.
• To create standalone notes or manage all your notes, use the Notes tab (available in Lightning Experience and the Salesforce mobile app).
• Read notes that were taken with the legacy note-taking tool from the Notes & Attachments related list on records. These notes don’t appear in the Notes tab.
• After enabling Notes, the legacy note-taking tool remains available for creating and managing notes in Salesforce Classic and the Salesforce mobile app. In Lightning Experience, the legacy note-taking tool is only used to read and manage notes that were created with it.
• In the Lightning Console, save the record you’re working on before accessing Notes from the utility bar. Deleting or saving a Note refreshes the entire console page and any unsaved changes are lost.
• When you create a note in Salesforce Classic, a note titled “Untitled Note” is created immediately. You’re automatically taken to the notes editor page.
• When you create a note in Lightning Experience, the note isn’t saved until you enter a title or content. After the note is saved, further changes are saved automatically
• In the Salesforce mobile app, create a task from a note by swiping a line on the note. Alternatively, tap in the toolbar to add or update the status of an action item. If your profile is assigned two or more task record types, you’re asked to choose a record type each time you create a task from a note. If your profile is assigned less than two Task record types, the task is immediately created.
• You can’t import notes with embedded images into other Salesforce orgs by using Data Loader or Dataloader.io.

Guidelines for Relating Notes to Events

You can’t relate a note in these circumstances:

• A proposed event
• An invitee’s copy of a multi-person event
• A recurring event
• An individual event within an event series

Guidelines for Sharing Notes

• When sharing a note in Lightning Experience, you can only give other users viewer access, because Notes doesn’t support simultaneous editing. If multiple people edit a note at the same time, they overwrite each other’s content.
• You can’t share notes in the Salesforce mobile app.
• Depending on your system settings, a note you share is shared with all users in your company when it’s posted:
  • To a feed that all users can see
  • To a profile
  • To a record
  • To a public group
  Ask your Salesforce administrator how Notes is configured at your company.

Guidelines for When a New Version of a Note Is Created

In Lightning Experience, you can restore previous versions of a note. A new version of a note is created when at least one of the following is true.

• The user updating the note is different from the user that created the existing version.
• The existing version is more than 15 minutes old.
• The size of the note body increases by more than 800 bytes.
• The size of the note body decreases by more than 20%.

Guidelines for the Legacy Note-Taking Tool

• All notes that are added to contacts and opportunities also roll up under the associated account.
• Notes are automatically related to the parent account.
• To create and manage notes on records, use the Notes & Attachments related list. You can’t create notes with the legacy note-taking tool in Lightning Experience.
• To restore deleted notes, use the Recycle Bin.
• If a note is marked private, it’s only accessible to the person who created or attached it.
• If you publish notes to external contacts via Salesforce to Salesforce, all public notes are automatically shared with a connection when you share the parent object. If Share With Connections on the attachment is selected, the attachment is automatically shared.
• To stop sharing a note or attachment, select Private.