How to download all attachments of all records of a custom object in Salesforce?

Question

I am new to file handling in Salesforce. I want to grab all the files attached to all the records of a custom object. Can anyone help me with it?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 02 '20 at 22:29

Old-school SF used Attachment object and you could simply go SELECT Body, ContentType, Name FROM Attachment WHERE ParentId = '...'.

In Lightning there's high chance your attachments are called "Files" (the actual API name is ContentDocument / ContentVersion). Check if the attachment's ID starts with 068 or 069. They aren't linked directly to your record. Instead there's ContentDocumentLink table sitting in between, used to cross-share same file. (You upload it and waste database space once, then you can cross-link it in Chatter posts, groups, other records...)

The official ERD isn't great, try to click through it in Setup -> Schema Builder or this answer might help: https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/a/160285/799. There's a sample query which you might have to fine-tune a bit, for example to SELECT ContentDocument.LatestPublishedVersion.VersionData to get the actual payload.

Check out other questions around here about ContentVersion. For example https://stackoverflow.com/a/48668673/313628 (it's other way around, about upload but should give you good idea).

P.S. If you have Email-to-Case there's chance there are Files that appear on the Case related list but their `ContentDocumentLink` links them to `EmailMessage`, not to `Case`. There's setup option that enables that. So maybe you need 2 queries, get Case and related Email ids, then all CDLs -> CDs -> latest file versions. — eyescream, Sep 03 '20 at 13:33

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 31 '23 at 06:17

AppExchange tool you can try for bulk download, Satrang Mass File Download AppExchange App helps to download Bulk of Files and Attachments from Standard and Custom Objects just within a few clicks.

URL - https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000EcsAOUAZ&tab=e

Disclaimer: I work at Satrang Technologies, the publisher of this Mass File Download AppExchange App.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 28 '21 at 22:33

You can export all notes and attachments using open-source sfdx-hardis plugin command

First, define a files export

sfdx hardis:org:configure:files

When prompted for SOQL request, you can input SELECT Id,Name FROM YourCustomObjectName__c

Then, run the files export

sfdx hardis:org:files:export

How to download all attachments of all records of a custom object in Salesforce?

3 Answers3