Does Deleting a Custom Field Remove It From All Page Layouts?

Question

Does Deleting a Custom Field Remove It From All Page Layouts?

We have around 90 Case Page-layouts. We were recently told to remove a field from all of them. For best practices, we want to remove the field from the page layout but keep it for a few weeks after deployment just in case they change their mind.

So what I'm thinking is: -Remove FLS visibility for everybody. -Wait 3 weeks & then delete the actual case custom field

Back to the question. Will deleting the case custom field remove it from Page Layouts?

Thank you in advance for your answer.

Answer 1

If you delete the field,it automatically remove from page Layouts. Better you just hide those fields from page layout. Again If you need those fields means you need to create it again,its really tedious task.

Think about it:

If you already used that fields in code then you cant delete it easily. If you try to delete it,it shows dependencies.

Also refer below links it may helpful to you:

Why some field can't be removed from page layout even though they are not mandatory

Answer 2

Yes, if you delete a field, it is automatically removed from the page layouts. But it is always better to keep those fields in the back-end for some time, before it is being deleted permanently.

As mentioned by you in your question, it would be better to remove field permissions, doing so, you won't have to remove fields from page layout as those fields won't be visible due to access restrictions.

If you wish to delete fields, below are the points that you should keep in mind. (Excerpt from this salesforce article)

• Before deleting a custom field, consider where it’s referenced. You can’t delete a custom field that’s referenced elsewhere. For example, you can’t delete a custom field that’s referenced by a field update or Apex.
• You can’t delete a field if that field is being updated by a background job, such as an update to a roll-up summary field. Wait until the background job finishes, and try again.
• When you delete a custom field, all of the field history data is deleted and changes are no longer tracked.
• A background process periodically runs that cleans up metadata associated with deleted custom fields. This process will affect the Last Modified Date and Last Modified By fields on page layouts, record types, and custom objects.