An administrator has been asked to change the data type of an auto number to text field. What should the administrator be aware of before changing the field?

Question

Options

• AExisting field values will remain unchanged.
• BExisting field values will be Converted.
• CExisting field values will be deleted.
• DExisting auto number field to Text is prevented.

• A
  87% (20)
• B
  4% (1)
• D
  9% (2)

Explanation

When you change an Auto Number field to a Text field in Salesforce, existing values are preserved as-is - they simply become text strings instead of system-generated numbers. Salesforce retains the data during this specific field type conversion, so nothing is lost or transformed.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• B (Converted) is wrong because the values don't change format or content - a record that showed "00001" still shows "00001," now stored as text rather than an auto number.
• C (Deleted) is wrong because Salesforce never silently deletes field data during a supported field type conversion.
• D (Prevented) is wrong because this specific conversion is allowed; Salesforce does block some conversions (e.g., text to number when non-numeric data exists), but Auto Number → Text is permitted.

Memory tip: Think "Auto Number → Text is a safe one-way street." The data travels intact because every number is already representable as text - there's no lossy transformation possible, so Salesforce allows it and keeps all values unchanged.

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