Getting rid of Account Name in Contacts for a NFP

[dani1213]

Hi,

I'm a university student that is currently working for a non-profit organization for a class, and they recently implemented Salesforce.  In the Contacts tab that came with Salesforce, there is a field called Account Name.  I don't think you can delete it because when I'm in edit layout mode and hover over the field, there is no "x" button for me to delete it.  My boss says that the Account Name is really not necessarily since they're mostly dealing with singleton clients.  Since I am not sure how to delete the Account name field, we are considering on just creating a new custom object that will be the new Contacts......

1) Is that worth all that hassle?

2) If it is, does anyone know an easy way to mass transfer contact information from the old Contacts into the new Contacts tab?  It would basically just be copying all the name, address, etc. over to a new tab.

Thanks for your help!

[Stevemo]

You can edit the field properties and page layout to make the Contact.Account not required, and if you really do need to get rid of it (which I wouldn't recommend) you can remove the field from the Contact Page Layout (but again I wouldn't recommend doing it)

[dani1213]

Right now, Account Name is already not required, but for some reason, whenever we save a Contact, the Account Name is automatically populated with the contact name.  Any ideas as to how to disable that?

Also, when I go to the Contacts layout page, I actually can't delete the Account Name (there is no "x" that shows up) - I think it's because it's the Salesforce default?

[Stevemo]

You can't "delete" a field from the Contact Page Layout, just select it and "drag" it from the Page Layout up to the list of available fields located at the top of the Page Layout Editor.

[dani1213]

Hello,

Thanks for all of your advice.  I just tried to "drag" the Account Name back to the list of available fields, and an error message popped up: This field must be displayed on the page layout and cannot be removed.

To try something else, I also just tried to edit an existing Contact: I deleted whatever was in Account Name, and then I saved the changes.  However, whatever was in Account Name was still there.

[Stevemo]

Sorry, my bad...  you can't remove Account from the Contact page layout.  But you can make it not required and "bury it" at the bottom of the page with the System Info fields.  

You can also use the Access Settings in the Field Properties to change the visibility settings for each User Profile. 

[dani1213]

I took your advice and I managed to "bury" the account name field and also change the visibility settings.  However, when we save a new client, the new client is automatically copied into the Accounts (my boss had changed the name to Organizations, like law firms, businesses, government, etc.) object as well, which is unnecessary because clients are just single people, not accounts/organizations.  Any ideas as to how to "unlink" the creation of a new client with the creation of a new account/organization?