Personal Settings
A Personal Settings page is the self-service area in Salesforce Classic where each user manages their own preferences without asking an administrator.
Definition
A Personal Settings page is the self-service area in Salesforce Classic where each user manages their own preferences without asking an administrator. A user opens it from the dropdown next to their name at the top of any page, then picks My Settings or Setup depending on how the org is configured. A left-hand menu groups options for personal information, security, display, email, and calendar, and a Quick Find box jumps straight to any page.
Personal Settings is a legacy label, but the feature is not dead. The Salesforce Classic interface it belongs to is the older one, and Salesforce has steered customers toward Lightning Experience for years. The identical toolset appears in Lightning under My Settings, reached from the profile picture. Both edit the same user record, so they are one toolset wearing two interfaces. The name survives mostly in older orgs, vintage documentation, and certification material.
How Personal Settings works and why the label is legacy
Where it sits in Salesforce Classic
In Salesforce Classic the entry point is the dropdown arrow beside your name in the top-right of every page. Clicking it shows either My Settings or Setup, and which label appears depends on org configuration and your permissions. Either path lands you in a personal area with a menu running down the left side. You expand a category, then pick the specific page you want. To skip the hunting, type the first few characters of a page name into the Quick Find box. Typing "pers" surfaces the Personal Information page, for example. This Quick Find behavior mirrors the one admins use in Setup, so the muscle memory carries over. Personal Settings is available in all editions except Database.com, which means nearly every Classic user has it. The mental model that matters is scope. Nothing you change here touches another user. These are per-user preferences, not org-wide configuration, so the blast radius of a mistake is a single login. That safety is exactly why Salesforce hands these controls to end users instead of locking them behind admin access.
Personal information and identity
The Personal Information page is usually the first stop. Here you update your name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and work details such as title and department. Some of these fields feed system behavior rather than just decorating a record. Salesforce sends notifications and password resets to the email on this page, so keeping it current matters more than it looks. Language and locale settings live in this same neighborhood. Locale controls how dates, times, numbers, and currency formats display, while language controls the interface text. Someone moving from a US to a European format changes locale to see day-first dates without anyone touching their profile. Time zone is a third identity-level setting that quietly shapes a lot. It decides how activity due dates, report timestamps, and calendar events render for that person. A sales rep who travels and never updates a time zone will see meetings at confusing hours. Because these choices affect only the individual, users are trusted to set them. Admins still pick sensible defaults when a user is created, but Personal Settings lets people correct and refine from there.
Security choices the user owns
Personal Settings carries the security tasks that belong to the individual rather than the administrator. From here you can change your password, update the security question used for recovery, and reset your security token. The security token is the piece many developers and integration users care about. It gets appended to a password when you log in from an untrusted network or through an API client, and resetting it invalidates the old one immediately. The new token is emailed to the address on your Personal Information page, which is one more reason to keep that address correct. Two notes catch people out. The Reset My Security Token option disappears when login IP ranges are set on your profile, and it is not offered to Chatter External or Chatter Free license users. Multi-factor authentication methods are also registered here, so enrolling an authenticator app or a security key is something you do yourself. Login history is visible too, listing recent sign-ins with timestamps, source IP, and application. That history is a quiet self-audit tool. None of this replaces org-level controls like session settings or login IP ranges, which admins govern.
Email, display, and calendar preferences
A large share of Personal Settings is about tailoring daily work. On the email side, you set the from name and reply address used on mail sent through Salesforce, build a signature, and choose an email composer. You can also copy yourself automatically on outbound messages and manage which alert subscriptions you receive. Display and layout options change how records feel without changing what the admin built. In Classic this includes adding, removing, and reordering tabs, and choosing which related lists appear and in what order on detail pages. These tweaks only affect optional elements in your own view, not the underlying page layout everyone shares. Calendar and reminder preferences round things out. You decide whether activity reminders pop up, set a default reminder lead time, and configure how events display. Meeting availability settings let you mark when you are open, so invitees see only free slots. Taken together, these preferences are the difference between a Salesforce that fits a person's habits and one that fights them. Adoption coaches always cover them, because a tool that feels personal gets used.
Classic Personal Settings versus Lightning My Settings
Personal Settings is the Salesforce Classic presentation. The same capabilities exist in Lightning Experience under My Settings, opened from the profile picture rather than the name dropdown. In Lightning you select your profile image at the top of any page, choose Settings, then use the left menu or Quick Find. Both front ends feed the same underlying user record and preference store, so a value changed in one shows up in the other. This is why treating them as two products is a mistake. The interface a given user sees depends on whether their org has Lightning Experience turned on for them. An org mid-migration may have some people in Classic seeing Personal Settings and others in Lightning seeing My Settings, all editing the same fields. One device limit is worth flagging: accessing personal settings is not supported on Lightning Experience in iPad Safari, where Salesforce recommends a desktop. Documentation written before the Lightning era leans on the Personal Settings name, so finding it in an old runbook signals vintage rather than a different feature. For training and help articles, the safe approach is to name both interfaces.
Why this is a legacy label, not a dead feature
Calling Personal Settings legacy misleads if you read it as retired. The functionality is alive and used every day. What is legacy is the Salesforce Classic interface itself, which Salesforce has guided customers away from for years in favor of Lightning Experience. Personal Settings is the Classic-specific name and navigation for capabilities that fully carry forward. New orgs default to Lightning, so most new users will only ever see My Settings. The reason to still understand Personal Settings is the long tail. Plenty of established orgs keep Classic for specific users or features, older documentation references the term, and certification material covers both interfaces. For an admin planning a Classic-to-Lightning move, the reassuring part is that personal preferences travel with the user. There is no separate migration of someone's signature, time zone, or reminder settings. They simply appear under My Settings once the user is in Lightning. The action item is training, not data work. Teach people the new doorway, the profile picture, because the rooms behind it are the ones they already know.
How to open and use Personal Settings
Personal Settings is not something you turn on. It is always present in Salesforce Classic for nearly every user. The task is finding it and knowing which page does what. Here is how to open it and reach a specific setting quickly in either interface.
- Open the personal area
In Salesforce Classic, click the dropdown arrow next to your name in the top-right corner, then select My Settings or Setup. In Lightning Experience, select your profile image and choose Settings instead.
- Jump with Quick Find
Rather than expanding the left-hand menu by hand, type the first few characters of a page name into the Quick Find box. Typing "pass" reaches Change My Password and "reset" reaches Reset My Security Token.
- Update the high-impact fields first
Open Personal Information and confirm your email, time zone, and locale. These shape password resets, reminder times, and how every date and number displays for you.
- Tailor email, display, and calendar
Set an email signature and reply name, adjust which tabs and related lists show in your view, and choose your default activity reminder behavior so the interface matches how you work.
Name, email, phone, address, title, language, locale, and time zone for your own user record.
Set a new password after entering your current one; subject to the org password policy.
Generates a new token and emails it to your address; the old token stops working at once.
From name, reply address, signature, and whether to copy yourself on outbound email.
Reminder pop-ups, default lead time, event display, and meeting availability windows.
- The Reset My Security Token option is hidden when login IP ranges are set on your profile, and Chatter External and Chatter Free users never see it.
- A token reset takes effect immediately, so any API client or integration logging in as you will fail until you update its stored token.
- Accessing personal settings is not supported on Lightning Experience in iPad Safari; use a desktop browser instead.
- Display tweaks like tabs and related lists change only your view, not the page layout the admin built for everyone.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Personal Settings.
- Reset Your Security TokenSalesforce
- Change Your PasswordSalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Personal Settings.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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