The Best Ways to Move Salesforce Data in 2026

A Helpful, People-Centered Guide to Clean, Trustworthy, AI-Ready Data

By 2026, Salesforce is no longer just a CRM. It has evolved into the central operating system of the modern enterprise—bringing together Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, Automation, Data Cloud, and the entire AI ecosystem under one connected platform. Businesses run on unified customer data and intelligent insights more than ever before, which means one thing:

Clean, secure, accurate, and well-structured data is now non-negotiable.

This blog post talks about the best ways to move Salesforce data in 2026, mixing technical accuracy with real-world advice.

Table of Contents

1. Look at all the information first

Understanding is the first step in any successful migration. Teams need to know where the data is now, how it’s set up, and if it still has any value before they move any records.

A full assessment can help you answer questions such as:

What information do you use every day to run your business?
What items, fields, and values are no longer useful?
What are the fields that aren’t used, have duplicates, or don’t match?
What can be kept instead of moved?
What datasets have dependencies that could change how things work?

Most businesses end up with a lot of extra data over time, like extra fields, unused objects, mismatched formats, and old picklists. If you don’t take this test, you’ll bring years of bad habits into a new system.

A full evaluation not only makes migration easier, but it also makes sure that the new Salesforce org is built on clean, useful, and business-ready data.

2. Before moving the data, clean it up and make sure it is all the same

One of the most costly mistakes businesses make is putting dirty, broken, or inconsistent data into a new Salesforce environment. The chance of this happening is higher in 2026. For AI models, analytics dashboards, and automated workflows to work, they all need good data.

What does it mean to clean data?

Deleting duplicate records
Putting all the IDs, phone numbers, and addresses in one place
Making changes to the formatting
Fixing entries that are missing information or have misspellings
Getting rid of old or useless values
Checking to see if the reference fields and picklists are right

When your data is clean, you can make better predictions, better divide your customers into groups, automate things more easily, and give your customers more personalised experiences.

Companies that don’t do this step often have to pay for it later, usually with expensive cleanups, unhappy users, and AI outputs that can’t be trusted.

3. Make a careful plan for mapping your data that won’t have any errors

Mapping the data is the most important step in every successful Salesforce migration. It links the past to the present and makes sure that every field, relationship, and value ends up where it should.

A good mapping plan has:

Aligning old fields with standard and custom fields in Salesforce
How to make relationships between master-detail and lookup
Setting rules about who owns what, who can see records, and how to share them
Changing how old values are kept
Fixing problems with names
Putting together fields that are the same

Automated mapping tools can be helpful, but people should always be in charge. If you mess up while mapping, it could break workflows, make reports harder to read, or change a customer’s history. This time spent here directly cuts down on problems after migration.

4. Build a strong structure for security and compliance

When it comes to protecting people’s privacy, GDPR, CCPA, DPDP, HIPAA, and other rules that only apply to certain industries are stricter than ever. It is important to handle every dataset safely during the migration process.

Here are some good ways to do things:

Encrypting data that is being sent and kept
Limiting access based on the principle of least privilege
Keeping track of all the migration activity
Grouping datasets based on how sensitive they are
Following rules about getting permission, protecting data, and keeping it safe
Using migration tools that are safe and follow the rules

A single compliance violation can cost a business millions of dollars and damage customer trust over time. Security isn’t just a part of migration; it’s what makes it work.

5. Make a clear and full plan for moving

A migration will eventually turn into a rescue mission if there isn’t a plan.

A good plan for moving should have:

Schedule and scope of the project
Source systems and data needs
Mapping documentation
The steps for moving from a sandbox to UAT to production
Testing and validating rules
What stakeholders are responsible for
Make a plan for how to talk to each other
Plan for a rollback
Make plans for going live

It’s easier to plan for the migration and less stressful when teams know what to do next

6. Pick the Right Tools for the Job

Moving data in Salesforce can be done in a lot of different ways, but not all of them work in every case. It depends on how big, how often, how hard it is to use, and how well it needs to work with other systems.

These are some tools that are common in 2026:

Salesforce Data Loader
Import Wizard for Salesforce
Tools for putting data into the Data Cloud
Integrations with MuleSoft
Solutions based on APIs
Informatica, Talend, Boomi, and Matillion (ETL tools)
BigQuery and Snowflake data pipelines
Apex scripts that are made just for you

If you have a small dataset, Data Loader might be all you need. A strong ETL platform is often needed for large business migrations. Choose tools that are reliable, can grow with your needs, and are well-managed. That’s the most important thing.

7. Move in steps, not all at once

Moving in stages lowers risk, makes it easier to check things, and helps teams find mistakes earlier in the process.

The most common stages are:

Moving schemas (objects, fields, and relationships)
The Sandbox’s First Load
Partial Data Load (example datasets)
Integration Testing (checking that all the automations, flows, and triggers work)
Real users do User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
Final Cutover Migration (load for production)
Check and Fixes After Moving

Phased migrations make checkpoints. Teams can look over, change, and stop bigger problems from happening when the system goes live at each stage.

8. Check everything again before and after the move

Validation checks that the data not only moved but also that it moved in the right way.

Steps for validation include:

Counting the same number of records in both the old and new systems
Making sure each field is correct
Examining the connections between parents and children
Testing triggers, flows, and automations
Checking out the analytics dashboards
Making sure that integrations are working properly
Finding records that are missing or have been copied

Even with advanced automated tools, checking by hand is still important. Business teams often see things that systems can’t.

9. Stay in touch with stakeholders in a clear and consistent way

Migration affects everyone, from salespeople and customer service agents to managers and executives. Users often feel lost or confused when communication isn’t clear.

Being able to talk clearly will be just as important as being good with technology in 2026.

The best ways to do things are:

Letting people know ahead of time what will change
Setting deadlines and goals that are realistic
Announcing planned downtime or system freezes
Telling people about new rules for naming things or data
Teaching people how to do new things
Making it easy for users to report problems after the site is up and running

People are more likely to use the product and get involved when they feel like they know what’s going on. Resistance grows when they don’t.

10. Make sure that support after migration and ongoing improvement are at the top of your list of things to do

The end of go-live doesn’t mean the end; it means the start of stability.

If you don’t take care of small problems soon after moving, they could get worse. Ongoing tuning makes sure that the new Salesforce setup works well.

After you move, you should do these important things:

Checking to see how well automation is working
Fixing broken rules, triggers, or workflows so that they can be checked
People say that they clean up maps or layouts at the field level
Keeping track of records that keep coming back
Checking to see if the information is correct
Checking to see if the integrations are set up correctly
Making rules to protect data over time

The Salesforce ecosystem gets stronger and better all the time when a migration goes well.

Conclusion

Data migration isn’t just something that IT does in the background anymore. Companies are moving more and more towards AI-driven decision making, predictive analytics, and omnichannel automation. It is what helps you be right, trust others, and follow the rules.

A smooth transition to Salesforce in 2026:

Makes things better for customers
Provides AI models with accurate information
Makes the group work better
Helps things go more smoothly
Lets you see things as they happen

Following the advice in this book is the most important thing. These include checking and cleaning, mapping, security, phased loading, validation, and always making things better.

Bottom Line

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