How do I mass update existing records after adding a new custom field?

Question

I added a new custom field to an object with many existing records. It was a checkbox field and during creation I specified the default value to be "true". However, it looks like all the records have the new field unchecked. Is this expected behaviour? More importantly, is there a way to mass update the value of the new field, like:

UPDATE Input_Source__c 
SET Hide_Province_Field__c = true

I have tried the developer console, but either my syntax is wrong or you can't run update queries through the console.

Answer 1

The default behaviour relates to 'new' records only, not existing - so yes expected behaviour.

The statement that you have provided is SQL rather than SOQL. You can't issue SQL statements within Salesforce, you have to take the following steps:

1. Retrieve the data using a SOQL query
2. Update the data using a DML statement

There are some governor limits that you should be aware of with both (e.g. only being able to retrieve maximum of 50,000 rows and only able to update a maximum of 10,000 etc.). If you exceed any of these limits, you may need to employ batch apex. However, if you are just talking about a few records you could do this:

List<Your_Object__c> myobjects = [ Select Input_Source__c From Your_Object__c ];
for( Your_Object__c myobject : myobjects )
{
    myobject.Input_Source__c = true;
}

update myobjects;

Edit: you could also use dataloader, i.e. extract the records, update the value to true and then update with data loader if you don't want to use Apex

Answer 2

You can use this native premium app called Smart-Mass-Update (it has 14-days trial) it supports all Salesforce versions and has a mass delete, mass edit, mass update, export to file and advanced filtering options.

https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N3000000B4KmAEAV