Record ID’s, not the associated names, are needed for certain fields when inserting or updating records to maintain foreign key relationships. ID's may also be needed when searching for certain objects.
For example: when assigning an owner to records that are inserted or updated the ID of the owner, NOT the owner name or alias, is required to process the change. When adding campaign members to an existing campaign, or changing record types.
There are many ways to get these:
- If only a few ID’s are needed, just go to Salesforce select the object and grab the ID from the URL: https://na1.salesforce.com/0013000000Iemv1 (0013000000Iemv1 is the ID)
- If a cross-reference table of ID’s is required, use MassEffect to export a particular object and store it on your PC. This is commonly done for the user object.
- If you have a spreadsheet with many records in which you need to obtain a Salesforce ID, use the exported spreadsheet (created in step 2) and the VLOOKUP function in excel to find the ID in the exported spreadsheet and add it to the spreadsheet without the ID's.
