I can delete a contact's email address manually in the contact editor, but if I try to add a workflow action to clear the email address, I'm not allowed, and I'm presented with the message, "This can't be cleared because it's a required property."
I'm trying to delete the email address when a contact is marked as "deceased", so that another contact (e.g. a spouse who shares the email address) can use it going forward.
Is this just to ensure caution when deleting emails by forcing admins to do it manually? Thanks for any advice!
I've discovered a way of doing this... you can copy a field from one field to another - so if you use your Workflow to copy "Alternative email" to "Email" then if Alternative email is always blank then Email will be blanked. Not ideal but a way round it... you could perhaps extend that by creating a custom field which is always blank and using that.
I've discovered a way of doing this... you can copy a field from one field to another - so if you use your Workflow to copy "Alternative email" to "Email" then if Alternative email is always blank then Email will be blanked. Not ideal but a way round it... you could perhaps extend that by creating a custom field which is always blank and using that.
What property type did you use? I tried that before posting in this thread, but the workflow just logged an error on the copy operation. I'm pretty sure I did use a single line text property.
Hi DarrenSimons. I tried your workaround with using the "alternative email"-field, which was blank, but I keep getting this error message "Thec ontact property couldn't be copied. The record doesn't have this property or the property doesn't have a value." (The contact did have the alternativ email-field.). How did you get around the "the property doesn't have a value."-issue?
My usecase: we create software and are a b2b business. a lot of our contacts hop between our customers, so we need to delete the email address, but want tpo keep the contact, in case the person shows up at another prospect or customer
I just ran a couple of Workflow tests and the only way I could solve the issue is to use custom code.
It's possible with Gmail to add a "+" then text (e.g. "email.address+12345@gmail.com) and Gmail ignores everything after the "+" but HubSpot thinks it's a new email address. We use this technique for testing.
We could write some custom code that swaps the number for the Contact ID so you always get a unique email address.
Do you have Ops Hub Pro? That could run the code (or we could use an external server).
Thanks, Mike! I am already setting the contact as a Non-Marketing Contact, so they won't get any marketing emails. But what I'm trying to do is delete their email address so that another contact can use it and recieve marketing emails. In some cases, we have contacts who share an email address, and if one of them passes away, the other will use the email address moving forward.
I could set it to a dummy email address, but then if another contact passes away, I would need to set theirs to a different dummy email address, so I would need to come up with a naming system for creating unique dummy email addresses, and I thought it would be simpler if I could just delete the email.
