What is the most important tip for working with Note?

Salesforce has two note objects: the legacy Note, capped at an 80-character Title and a 32 KB plain-text Body on a single parent, and ContentNote, which holds rich text and links to many records.

Core CRMBeginner

Note

Q: When do organizations use Note?

A mid-market manufacturer: Reps log call summaries as enhanced notes linked to both the Account and the open Opportunity, so a handover keeps its context.

Q: What happens when IsPrivate is set to true on a legacy Note record?

Private is not a blackout. The flag narrows ordinary record access, and that is all it does. Broad data permissions still read straight through it, and a full data export still returns the note. When commentary genuinely must be invisible to admins, a note is the wrong container.

Q: How do you relate a single enhanced note to an Opportunity, its Account and a Contact?

ContentNote has no parent field at all. Attachment happens through ContentDocumentLink, with LinkedEntityId pointing at the target record, so one note surfaces on as many records as you link it to. The legacy Note object is the one with a polymorphic ParentId, and that field accepts exactly one value.

Q: An admin enables Notes in Setup and expects old plain-text notes to show up in the new Notes related list. What actually happens?

The two lists read two different objects. Switching the setting on creates the ContentNote path and the editor that feeds it, while the existing rows are Note records, so they carry on rendering where they always did. Nothing moves until someone writes a migration.

A Note is a Salesforce record that holds written commentary attached to another record, so a rep can capture what was said on a call without forcing it into a standard field.

Hear it

Note record summarizing a Q2 renewal meeting with Acme Corporation, with formatted body text and related attachments. — Illustrative mock of the Note page in Lightning Experience

§ 01

Definition

A Note is a Salesforce record that holds written commentary attached to another record, so a rep can capture what was said on a call without forcing it into a standard field. Two different objects carry the name.

The legacy Note object stores plain text against a single parent. Title caps at 80 characters, Body at 32 KB, and a polymorphic ParentId ties the note to exactly one record. It surfaces in the Notes and Attachments related list.

ContentNote, the object behind enhanced Notes, is available from API version 32.0 onward. It stores rich text on the Files framework, keeps versions, and links to several records at once through ContentDocumentLink. Salesforce treats the combined list as superseded by the separate Notes and Files lists, so new notes belong in ContentNote.

§ 02

In plain English

👋 Study buddy

“Think of a sticky note you press onto a customer's file so the next person who opens it knows what happened. Salesforce keeps two kinds. The old kind is plain writing stuck to one file. The new kind takes bold text, pictures and lists, and sits on several files.”

§ 03

Worked example

scenario · real-world useNote

A rep at a regional HVAC distributor finishes a renewal call and opens the Account record. The Notes related list shows two recent items; Notes and Attachments below it shows four from 2019. She clicks New on the Notes list, titles it Q3 renewal call, pricing pushback, and pastes the three SKUs the customer wants repriced. She links that one note to the Opportunity and the Contact as well. The 2019 items stay put: legacy Note records, and nothing converts them.

§ 04

How Salesforce ended up with two Note objects

The legacy Note object, field by field

Title caps at 80 characters and Body at 32 KB of plain text. Both come from the Fields for the Old Note-Taking Tool table in Salesforce Help, not the Fields for Notes table above it, which reads 200 characters and 50 MB for enhanced Notes. Body takes no markup and no images, and links arrive as raw URLs. ParentId is a required polymorphic lookup accepting around a hundred object types, but exactly one record at a time. Supported calls cover create, update, upsert, delete, query, retrieve and undelete, so Apex, SOQL and Data Loader all work against it today. What you cannot do is extend it. There are no custom fields and no version history, and two people saving the same note overwrite each other.

ContentNote and the enhanced Notes editor

ContentNote represents a note created with the enhanced note taking tool. The object reference dates it twice and the two disagree: released in Winter '16, available from API version 32.0. Winter '16 shipped as API 35.0, and 32.0 was Winter '15. Trust the API number. Its Content field is base64 and accepts formatted HTML, which is where bold text, headings, lists and inline images come from. Titles stretch to 200 characters, and TextPreview, added in API 35.0, exposes a filterable excerpt. Attaching a note to a record works differently here. There is no ParentId. You insert a ContentDocumentLink with LinkedEntityId set to the record, which is how one note appears on an Opportunity, its Account and a Contact at once. After creation only Content and Title are updatable, and SharingPrivacy, from API 41.0, can set a note to Private on Records.

What the Private checkbox actually does

Setting IsPrivate to true does not hide a legacy note from everyone but its owner. That assumption catches orgs out during audits. Salesforce documents private notes as accessible to the owner and to users with View All Data, with Modify All Data required to edit or delete one. An administrator pulling an export still sees them. Normal access follows the parent record and the org's sharing settings. There is no separate share table here, so you cannot widen access to one note without widening access to whatever it hangs off. When commentary has to stay restricted, a custom long text area field with field-level security audits far better than the checkbox.

Two related lists that look almost identical

Notes and Attachments is the old combined list, rendering legacy Note and legacy Attachment records side by side. Notes and Files are the newer separate lists, reading ContentNote and ContentDocument. The naming does real damage. A note written in the Lightning editor lands in the Notes list and never appears in Notes and Attachments, and the reverse holds too. In Salesforce Classic the New Note button on the combined list still writes a legacy record even when enhanced Notes is switched on. In Lightning Experience that button is gone and only Upload Files remains. Salesforce says the combined list will eventually be phased out, but has named no release and no date.

Loading and migrating without picking the wrong object

Loading against Note produces plain-text legacy records. Loading against ContentNote produces enhanced notes, with Content base64 encoded and an upload ceiling of 50 MB before encoding overhead. A script aimed at the wrong object succeeds quietly, and you find out weeks later when users say their notes look wrong. Salesforce converts nothing for you. Moving history means an extract, a transform, a load, then a second pass creating ContentDocumentLink rows so each new note attaches to its record. Notes with embedded images do not import cleanly between orgs through Data Loader, and no standard report type spans the two objects.

When the legacy object still earns its place

Older managed packages and long-lived integrations read and write Note directly, and you cannot rewrite someone else's package on your timetable. Orgs with a decade of history often need those records queryable for compliance long after nobody adds new ones. Treat the legacy object as a read-and-preserve store, and stop pointing new automation at it. Anything built today should create ContentNote instead. The failure worth avoiding is keeping both alive as create targets. Half the team writes in one list, half in the other.

§ 05

Turn on enhanced Notes and show both lists

Enhanced Notes is still off in some older orgs, and the Notes related list will not appear until you switch it on.

Open Notes Settings
In Lightning Experience, go to Setup, then Feature Settings, then Sales, then Notes Settings. In Salesforce Classic the path is Setup, Customize, Notes, Notes Settings.
Enable Notes and save
Select Enable Notes and save. Until this is on, the Notes and Attachments related list in Lightning Experience carries attachments only.
Add the Notes related list
Edit the page layout for each object that matters and drag the Notes related list on. It reads different data from Notes and Attachments.
Keep the old list in place
Leave Notes and Attachments on the layout while legacy records still matter, then retire it.

Key options

Enable Notesremember

Switches on the enhanced editor and the Notes related list.

Notes related listremember

Decides whether ContentNote records appear on that object.

Notes and Attachments related listremember

Keep it while legacy records still matter.

Gotchas

Orgs on profile-based Chatter rollout must grant Chatter permissions before anyone sees enhanced Notes.
Notes has no simultaneous editing. Sharing grants viewer access only, and two people editing at once overwrite each other.
Enabling Notes converts nothing. Legacy records stay where they are.

Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Note in Salesforce, step by step

§ 06

How organizations use Note

A mid-market manufacturer

Reps log call summaries as enhanced notes linked to both the Account and the open Opportunity, so a handover keeps its context.

A 200-seat nonprofit

Ten years of legacy Note records stay on donor Accounts for audit purposes, while every new note is created as a ContentNote.

A managed services provider

An older billing package still writes Note records through the API, so the team keeps both related lists on the layout.

Trust & references

Sources

Cross-checked against the following references.

Official documentation

Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Note.

Keep learning

Hands-on resources to go deeper on Note.

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About the Author

Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He writes and edits salesforcedictionary.com, published by KineticBit Inc., to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.