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Duplicate Field Alerts Follow

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Chris
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You have received a message like this one and are wondering what to do to resolve this:

From: ORG's Admin Name <admin@yourdomain.com>
Date: Friday, 26 April 2019 at 08:40
To: Peter Parker <peterparker@yourdomain.com>
Subject: Propertybase system notification: Duplicate field detected - admin intervention required 
Hello Peter Parker,
 
We have detected a duplicate field in your Propertybase account located on the 
pba__Listing__c object, with the field name of Property__c.

Please rename or remove this field as soon as possible. 
When duplicate fields exist in Propertybase it leads to significant errors. 
Click here to learn more.

If you need assistance with this matter, please contact Propertybase Support. 
Please include your org ID (00D5Z00000123456) in your support message.
 
Best,
Your Propertybase Team

The above message is telling you, that there are two fields on an object with the same Field Name also known as API (Field) name. You will need to find those two fields on the object in "Fields & Relationships" in Object Manager>Object>Fields & Relationships and change the API Field name of one of them.

Also note: prefixes from installed packages like pba__ are fully ignored by the system, so pba__Property__c and Property__c are considered duplicates.

In the above example, you would find the fields that have "Property__c" in the API name. So you can't look for them via their label or use the Quickfind box (as that will also only find the labels).

Solution Approach 1:
Either make sure you have loaded all fields by scrolling all the way to the bottom of the "Fields & Relationships" page and you see the full field count at the top (screenshot shows "180 Items") and then you use "Find in Page" (CMD-F or Ctrl-F) to search for the field name string "Property__c":

2019-05-15_10-58-43.png
Once you have found and identified the duplicated fields, there might be your own custom field and the managed field like in our example, edit your own custom field and change the API field name:
2019-05-15_11-08-42.png
Solution Approach 2:
Or you switch to "Classic", find the object in Setup>Objects>Listings and search that page for the field name string (see also this article on API Field Names):
2019-05-15_11-03-24.png

 

Using "Find In Page" (CMD-F or Ctrl-F) to find the string:
2019-05-15_11-04-46.png

 

Once you have found and identified the duplicated fields, there might be your own custom field and the managed field like in our example, edit your own custom field and change the API field name:
2019-05-15_11-08-42.png

 

Note: Changing a field's API name can have effect on integrations and automations. Please do check if you have used the field e.g. in Process Builder Rules, publishing it on a website or using it in email or PDF templates. You will need to update the changed API name there, too.

 

How does this even happen and can I prevent this?
Usually this is the case, when you create your own custom field with the same label as an existing field. The API Name populates automatically with the label you put in and by that matches the already existing field.
To reduce the chance of creating duplicate fields names, you could simply always add a suffix to your API field names which would also allow you to identify that you created that field, so for above example e.g. Property_custom which will show up after saving as Property_custom__c.

New to Field Names? Also check out these resources:

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