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Parent lookups when importing related records

Key Takeaway

A child record's lookup or master-detail field needs the parent's Salesforce ID. If your import file doesn't have that ID, import tools let you match the parent by an external ID or another field instead.

When you import child records, such as contacts, each one has to link to its parent record, such as an account. Your import file often identifies the parent by something other than its Salesforce ID, such as a legacy system key or the account name. The Data Import Wizard, Data Loader and Dataloader from MuleSoft each give you a way to find the correct parent from the values your file does have.

Lookups: source object and target object

A lookup is a relationship between two objects. The object that contains the lookup field is the source object, and the object the lookup points to is the target object.

For example, the Account lookup field (AccountId) on a Contact links the contact to its parent account. Here, Contact is the source object and Account is the target object.

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