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jygjyg 

Cannot add Rich Text Field to Formula Field?

About 15 bullet points down,  https://na11.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/fields_using_rich_text_area.htm it seems to imply that you can use rich text fields in formula fields.  However when I attempt to create my formula field and open the formula editor, all fields but the rich text fields are available.  The only thing that might make a difference is that the rich text fields I am attempting to reference are not in the initial object receiving the formula field, but something pointing to by the initial object.

 

Can someone shed some light on this for me?  Thanks.

 

jyg

Andy BoettcherAndy Boettcher

The Formula field is not compatible with Rich Text fields.  Behind the scenes of the Rich Text field, there is a lot of formatting that cannot be easily parsed out - so Salesforce just removes the option.

 

-Andy

jygjyg

Thanks for the reply.  I'd love to see documentation about this... For that matter, I'd love to see Salesforce publish anything substantial about similar incompatibilities, shortcomings or bugs.

Andy BoettcherAndy Boettcher

Salesforce does have an incredible amount of tools and community support that makes *nearly* anything happen, but there are always systemic limitations that are understood by some, some not.

 

The best thing you can do is exactly what you did - always assume "yes, I can do that", give it a whirl, check the documentation, and reach out to the community.

 

-Andy

jygjyg

I agree, it is the best we can do.  But Salesforce can do better.  Having to wait hours or days or even weeks for a forum reply, if any, for information that is already known by Salesforce is very unfortunate.  

 

There needs to be a bug tracking system for Force.com.  I'm not the first to repeatedly plead for this.  I run into these arcane tidbits all the time and, though they generally are fixed with the smallest tweaks of code or configuration,  they are more often than not some of the greatest time wasters (if not cause for hair loss).   I've begun to operate on the assumption that Force.com documention is outdated, incomplete or just plain incorrect.  I don't think this is what Salesforce wants in its developer community.   But there's little done to correct this. Many times have I spent a day (or more) assuming that a problem was a coding error of my own making, based upon the erroneous understanding that I had complete reference documentation.  But we really cannot assume this, can we?  What a variable that throws into the development process!

 

In the PHP world, bugs or documentation shortcomings are quickly identified because the community is permitted to comment within the documentation, and the PHP interpreter developers read and act on it.  Then, more importantly,  there's http://bugs.php.net.   And that's all free, open source software.