Bulk Importing State and Country Global Picklist Value

Question

Is there a way to mass upload a list of Country’s and States into the Country and State Territory Picklist section of setup in Salesforce?

Looks like its been an idea for a while and looking at the metadata docs, it looks like you can use the metadata API to edit existing State and Country picklist values but you cant create them.

If thats the case, do you just create a custom object so you can bulk import this data and then use that for location based attribution for Account, Contact, and Lead?

Can you create a package with a Package.XML setting file as a workaround?

Answer 1

No, it isn't possible to import new Countries and Territories as you've found in the documentation. It is a very tedious point, click, type process. Salesforce provides 239 countries and territories as standard for country/territory address picklists, though. Maybe you don't need to import them?

While you could try to use an alternative such as a separate custom object, you wouldn't be able to easily integrate it with standard address fields. In addition, the new custom address field requires you to use Country and Territory picklists.

One last alternative could be to use an AppExchange package that lets you continue to use the standard address fields, but provided validation. One example I found is AddressTools. (Disclaimer: I have never used this package, so I'm not vouching for it.)