Update Contact Phone with the Account Phone

Question

Trying to get Account field "Phone" to populate "Main Office Phone" on Contact upon creation of a new contact. This is some copied code that I tried to use as a sample, but I have a Variable Does Not Exist error on listConForPhoneUpdate. Can anyone see my possible error(s)?

trigger ContactPhone on Account (before update) 
{
    for (Account acc : Trigger.New)
    {
        List<Contact> listConForPhoneUpdate = [Select Phone from Contact 
            where Phone != null and AccountID =: acc.id];

        for(Contact con : listConForPhoneUpdate)
            con.Phone = acc.Phone;
    }

    update listConForPhoneUpdate;
}

Answer 1

In Apex {} defines a scope and listConForPhoneUpdate is declared inside a scope but referenced outside it hence the compile error. Correct code indenting would make that clearer.

Your current trigger is trying to propagate changes on Account to existing child Contact objects. You would need a Contact trigger to set the Phone when a new Contact is created.

Answer 2

Try the code below. You've defined "listConForPhoneUpdate" inside the for loop. I don't think it is accessible outside the for loop.

trigger ContactPhone on Account (before update) 
{
List<Contact> listConForPhoneUpdate;

    for (Account acc : Trigger.New)
        {
        listConForPhoneUpdate = [Select Phone from Contact where Phone != null and AccountID =: acc.id];
        for(Contact con : listConForPhoneUpdate )
            con.Phone = acc.Phone;
        }
update listConForPhoneUpdate;
}