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Goal: Within a contact, the name field is concatenated in the user view and I would like to add custom fields to this concatenation. Currently, appears this is not possible, though possible I am missing something.


Background: Within Salesforce it appears that the name field is a set of three fields: Prefix, First, Last; documentation say it's just the First, Last - though at least my instance appears to be the Prefix, First, Last.

Also, it appears that this summer, that Salesforce will be introducing the new default fields to make this: Prefix, First, Middle, Last, Suffix.

"I'm pleased to announce that we will be offering a sneak peek of Middle Name and Suffix on Leads, Contacts, Person Accounts and Users in our upcoming Summer release. More details to follow on how you can get access to this functionality for your organization." Blake Markham - Salesforce, Product Manager

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  • What exactly are you trying to achieve? Apr 3, 2014 at 2:53
  • Why don't you create just a formula field?
    – brovasi
    Apr 3, 2014 at 2:54
  • I don't think that's possible since the Name field is one of the "special" system fields. You don't have control over that. You might want to create a custom field as @brovasi mentioned and concatenate any fields you want, then use your custom "Name" field... Apr 3, 2014 at 3:04

2 Answers 2

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You won't be able to change the formula that "Builds" the standard name field.

You can however create a new custom field with a formula that concatenates the component fields, e.g.:enter image description here

I used this formula to build the "name examp" at the top of the previous screenshot using the components of the standard name field plus my middle name field (no doubt someone could write a more elegant formula):

text(Salutation) &" "& FirstName &" "& middlename__c &" "& LastName

Of note - you have to use "text" on the Salutation as it's a picklist value.

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  • +1 Putting aside the fact that you've now posted two answers that appear to be the same solution basically, though each with different pieces of info on the solution - nice answer; that said, upvoted both, grateful for the help. So, nice pic of the solution, and code is clearly of use too. I will give it a go, and report back. Again, thanks!
    – blunders
    Apr 3, 2014 at 4:47
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As per previous comments - I would create custom fields for the "middle" and "suffix".

Then create a custom field that concatenates the respective fields.

As far as I'm aware you can't remove the default "Name" field from a page layout(?) so you would end up with both the standard name field and your custom one.

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  • Thanks, possible that I am misunderstanding something, but believe the formulas are read-only (unlike the Name field) and that the Name field is pretty core to running reports, doing 3rd party integration, etc - right? Also, I am able to confirm that it is not possible to remove the Name field from the Contact layout.
    – blunders
    Apr 3, 2014 at 3:24

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