Delete Inactive Picklist Values in Bulk (Beta)

With the Salesforce summer’22 release, we can bulk delete unused inactive picklist values. Before the release of summer’22, custom picklists with many inactive values were difficult to maintain because we can delete inactive ones at a time. let’s take a look in brief.

Clean Up Inactive Picklist Values (Beta)

Managing inactive picklist values and establishing restrictions on the number of inactive values for custom picklists can help your Salesforce org run more smoothly and efficiently. You can bulk delete inactive unused values from a picklist if there are a lot of them.

Below are the steps to avail of this feature in your org.

Active Bulk delete inactive picklist values(Beta) option

• Click Setup.
• In the Quick Find box, type Picklist Settings.
• Activate Bulk Delete Inactive Picklist Values (Beta) option.

Bulk Delete Inactive Picklist Values

Now, we will get the option to bulk delete inactive unused picklist values.

Below are the rules that apply while bulk deleting picklist values.

Rules

• This feature is available only for custom picklist fields on an object. It’s not available for standard or multi-select picklist fields.
• This feature is only for picklist fields that have defined values. It’s not available for picklist fields that use a global value set.
• This feature deletes inactive, unused picklist values. If a picklist value is inactive but still referenced in a record, the value isn’t deleted.
• After you delete unused values, if a picklist is unbound and the total number of inactive values falls below the limit, the field is set to a bound picklist.
• While the job that deletes inactive values runs, these actions are unavailable on that picklist field: Activate, Activate Selected, Deactivate, Deactivate Selected, Delete, Delete Selected, Replace, and Replace Selected. The buttons are enabled, but an error message is returned when you click them.
• While the job that deletes inactive values runs, changes to the picklist field via Metadata API are unavailable. You can retrieve data from the field, but you can’t: create a picklist value, update the field or its values, delete the field or its values, or deploy the field.

Follow the below steps to delete all inactive unused values from a picklist.

• Click Setup.
• Click on Object Manager, and select your Object.
• Click on Fields & Relationships, and click the picklist field. In the Picklist Values Used section, you can see how many inactive picklist values the field has.
• From the Inactive Values section of the picklist field, click Delete Unused Values.

Delete unused values

After all of the picklist values have been deleted, you will receive an email indicating whether or not the deletion was successful. The email is sent to the user whose email address was used to initiate the deletion.

Click here to see release notes of summer'22 on Clean Up Inactive Picklist Values (Beta) 

If you have any questions you can reach out our Salesforce Consulting team here.