Changing the data types of fields

You can change the data type of a field after a field is added and if no values are stored in the field.

Tip
Review the article Field properties before you add fields so that you choose the correct data type for the data that you want to store. 

Scenario

You added a new field and chose the wrong data type and no values are stored in the field.

The data types are as follows:

• Short Text.  The max length is 255 characters.
• Long Text. The max length is 10,000 characters.
• Numeric. The max length is 19 digits or 19 digits plus the minus (-) symbol.
• Decimal. The max length is 11 characters including the decimal separator. As subtype, you can select General or Decimal ($). Select general if you want to pair the field with a field that allows users to select a currency. 
• DateTime. The options are date and time, date only, and local date. 
• Checkbox.
• System and custom objects.

Tip
You can create a filter to verify that the field is empty. Open the page, such as the People page, and add a filter: <name_of_field> IS NOT EMPTY. See Creating searches 

You can change fields with the following data types to any other data type:

• Date
• Decimal
• Custom object
• Long text
• Short text

Exceptions

By default, when you add numeric and checkbox fields, they are automatically populated  with the value 0 (zero) so you can’t change the data type of these fields. Instead of changing the data type of these fields, you can archive them after you run the dependency checker and then create new fields.

Related articles

Archiving fields