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Is it possible to get the ID of a Contact which is part of a Person Account?

I have a custom object which has a custom field referencing the Person Account, though it seems to be referencing the Contact directly. I have created a button which I am using to pass the ID into a Visualforce Page.

With the Insert Field drop-down on the create/edit button page I can put in {!Account.Id} or {!Contact.Id} but neither of these work. The Account ID is placed in the URL but is not the correct ID and the Contact ID is blank, which I assume is because the button is on a Person Account page and not a Contact Page.

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  • I'm interested in seeing the answer to this too. I recall trawling through the Force.com ID schema browser in the past looking for it, but was unable to find it.
    – David Gillen
    Aug 7, 2012 at 15:13
  • Can you provide a little more detail on what isn't working? We have custom objects referencing Person Accounts by doing lookups to Accounts, filtered by "Is Person Account" and record types. I haven't tried linking our PAs to Visualforce pages yet, though.
    – Mike Chale
    Aug 7, 2012 at 15:30

3 Answers 3

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I Up-voted Mike Chale as he pointed me in the right direction.

To get this to work I use the Account.Id to get the Account.PersonContactId which is then used in my Custom Object.

Account a = [Select PersonContactId From Account Where Id = :AccountId];
CustomObject co = [Select Name From CustomObject Where Client__c = :a.PersonContactId];

There doesn't seem to be a way to get this value in the Merge Field drop-down list on the create/edit button page.

A list of all person account fields can be found in the documentation. Scroll 2/3 down the page to the section titled "IsPersonAccount Fields".

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  • Could you populate that into a custom field, maybe via trigger when a new PA is created?
    – Mike Chale
    Aug 7, 2012 at 15:49
  • You would probably have to do it after the insert so the Id exists, but I don't see why that wouldn't work.
    – Nalum
    Aug 7, 2012 at 16:02
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Using the Schema Builder, I see the Account object has a "Person Contact" field, that is a Lookup(Contact). That is the only filed I see that seems to reference Person Accounts.

Edit: Double-clicking on that field shows the field name to "Person_Contact".

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  • Do you know the API name of this field? I think that's what needed for @Nalum's merge fields.
    – ca_peterson
    Aug 7, 2012 at 15:29
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    All it shows is the field name being "Person_Contact".
    – Mike Chale
    Aug 7, 2012 at 15:32
  • This does not exist in the merge fields. Tough I may be able to use it in the Apex code. Will check that now.
    – Nalum
    Aug 7, 2012 at 15:34
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I had an issue accessing this field, I solved it by creating a formula field on the account object to show it - the formula was simply PersonContact.Id

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