Salesforce import: "REQUIRED_FIELD_MISSING ... [LastName]"
Salesforce's Data Import Wizard rejects any Contact or Lead row that has no value in Last Name, the one field both objects require on every record. Salesforce's own help article states the rule as a general template — “Required fields are missing: [Fieldname__c]” — and the literal wording with [LastName] in place of the placeholder is read from a Salesforce Trailblazer Community thread describing the exact message the Wizard shows for this field.
Built for anyone preparing a contact or company file for HubSpot or Salesforce — sales operations, RevOps, and agencies migrating a client's data.
Read from Salesforce HelpSalesforce Help · Salesforce Trailblazer Community — help.salesforce.com documents the error as a general field-name template; the literal “[LastName]” wording quoted above is read from the Trailblazer Community thread linked beside it, not from Salesforce's own article — disclosed here rather than presented as a single vendor citation.
What this error means
Salesforce's Contact and Lead objects both require Last Name on every record. A row that maps a Last Name column but leaves the cell blank is not the same defect as a file with no Last Name column at all — Salesforce's Wizard reports the two differently, and rejects only the specific rows carrying the blank, not the whole file.
What causes it, and what our engine actually checks
CRM Import Check's missingRequiredValue rule runs after column mapping: once Last Name is confirmed mapped to a real column, every row is checked for a value in it, and a blank cell in a mapped column raises missingRequiredValue on that row specifically — never missingRequiredColumn, which is reserved for a file where no column maps to Last Name at all. Run against a three-row sample file built to exercise exactly this distinction, the engine flagged the one row with the blank and left the mapped column alone.
What the engine found in a sample file
One row in the sample mapped Last Name correctly but left the cell empty, and the engine flagged it as missingRequiredValue, a blocker. The same row also carried no email and no phone number, which is what noContactMethod is for — a warning that, even setting the missing name aside, nothing in the row could actually reach this person.
missingRequiredValueBlocker2noContactMethodWarning2Blocker stops the import outright, or lets it through with data silently lost. Warning usually gets through but is worth checking before you trust the numbers. Notice is informational — safe to leave, safe to clear.
Reproduced from a sample file — read September 9, 2026.
Check your own file for this
Drop the contact file you were about to import into Salesforce below. It is read in this browser tab, the same engine runs the same check, and you will see immediately which rows are missing Last Name.
CSV, TSV or Excel, up to 20 MB
How to fix it by hand
Filter the Last Name column for blank cells and fill in the missing surname from whatever source the row came from — a business card, an email signature, the original contact form. A row you genuinely cannot attach a surname to is not a Salesforce contact yet; leave it out of this import rather than typing a placeholder Salesforce will accept and treat as real.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does Salesforce reject a row with a missing Last Name?
- Last Name is a required field on both the Contact and Lead objects in Salesforce — every record needs one, and the Data Import Wizard rejects any row where it's blank, even if every other field is filled in correctly.
- Why does this page cite two different sources?
- Salesforce's own help article states the rule as a generic template with a placeholder field name; the exact wording with “[LastName]” filled in is read from a Salesforce Trailblazer Community thread describing what the Wizard actually shows. Both links are on this page so you can judge each source for what it actually backs.
- Can CRM Import Check fill in a missing Last Name automatically?
- No — inventing a name would be a guess, and this product never guesses a value into existence. It finds every row missing one so a person can fill it in from the original source.
What CRM Import Check does with this file
Upload a file carrying this problem into CRM Import Check and it lists every row with a blank Last Name by row number, alongside anything else that row is also missing, before you import anything. It never invents a surname to fill the gap.
The file you'd check is read in your browser tab — it is never uploaded anywhere.
What it cannot do here
The tool tells you which rows are missing Last Name; it cannot tell you what the missing name is. That answer only exists in whatever source the contact came from.