Salesforce Interview questions and answers for Import Wizard and Data Loader

1. What is Import wizard?

• Import wizard is a web based tool to process bulk records.
• With import wizard we can process maximum of 50,000 records.
• In import wizard we can’t see few objects (ex: if there is masterdetail relationship between two objects then child object we can’t see).

2. What is Data Loader?
Data Loader is a stand-alone tool to process bulk records. With Dataloader we can process maximum of 5 million records. Most of the time we use only Dataloader. Default batch size of the Dataloader is 200.

3. Which operations we can perform on dataloader?

• Insert (Inserting brand new records, no need of ID)
• Update (Updating the existing records based on the record ID)
• Upsert (To Upsert we should have one external ID field on the object, based on the external id field if the value already exists it will update, if doesn’t exist then it will insert)
• Delete (Delete the records based on the id provided, to delete we need only id, deleted records can be found in recycle bin)
• Hard delete (Delete the records based on the id provided, to delete we need only id, deleted records can’t be found in recycle bin, Note: If we enable bulk API in data loader settings then only we can perform Hard delete.)
• Export (From any object we can export records based on the SOQL query, Note: We can’t export deleted records which are there in the recycle bin)
• Export all (From any object we can export records based on the SOQL query, Note: Using Export all we can export deleted records which are there in the recycle bin also)

4. Data loader or Import wizard supports which file format?
CSV (Comma Separated Values)

5. What is the filed mapping file format of the data loader?
SDL( “Salesforce Data Loader” file of Field mapping)

6. How to insert null values into dataloader?
In dataloader settings we should enable ‘insert null values’ checkbox otherwise we can’t insert null values.

7. What is external ID?
Suppose we have account table in Salesforce and account table outside of the Salesforce (ex: .csv file, sql database). In Salesforce all the records can be identified with record id and outside of the Salesforce we can’t recognize records with Salesforce id that is the reason to compare outside table and salesforce table in Salesforce for one of the field we have to enable external ID (we can enable external id for text, number, auto number and email). If we enable external id we can compare that particular column with the column which is available in external table. While comparing if the both column values are same then it will update otherwise it will insert.

8. Maximum batch size of data loader?
10,000 records and minimum 1 record.

9. What is default batch size if we enable bulk API?
2,000 records.