Salesforce — Invalid Reference

Example warning

Foreign key external ID: 0000955741 not found for field Some_Custom_Field__c in entity Account".

Warning description

This happens when Salesforce rejects a record update/create because an invalid value was written to a relationship field.

In Salesforce, it is possible that certain fields contain links to other records. If such a field is setup, it must contain a valid reference to another record. If Salesforce cannot locate a record for the related entity type, and null values are not permitted, this error will be emitted.

Warning symptoms

• Records contain stale data
• Records do not correctly link to the expected records
• Records are missing

Other information

It is possible to receive this error if the field does not support nulls (/empty values), but you attempt to write an empty value into it.