I work in an Unlimited version Org where the limit for the number of Contact custom fields is 800. And I ran into it. We were in a process of deleting around 300 and we deleted so. After thinking that we are now back to 500 fields and we can create 300 more, we ran into the following error:
"No Clean Data Columns Found"
This is a weird kind of error. After diagnosing and breaking and cracking and thrashing my neurons into it, I realized there are three stages of deletion.
Soft Delete (You delete it and it goes in the Recycle Bin)
Hard Delete (You go to the Recycle Bin and click on Erase). Now here is the big pain. There is currently no interface in the Salesforce recycle bin that allows a mass Erase of the deleted fields. So I went about erasing each field one by one.
The third delete is called a Physical Delete. For this, you got to call the Salesforce support team as they do it for you and you cant do it yourself, unless you wait 45 days when it automatically gets deleted, and I'm sure no one can afford waiting that long.
Here is a reference to the stages of deletions: https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewSolution?urlname=How-to-retrieve-my-records-and-data-that-has-been-lost-or-deleted-1327108681812&language=en_US
So if you ever come across the error message "No Clean Data Columns Found", the only thing you can currently do is to get in touch with Salesforce support and ask them to Physically Delete the Erased fields.
Be sure to mention your Org Id otherwise they might physically delete your darling fields from a different sandbox.
There is another mention about this error here : https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewSolution?id=000126971&language=en_US which doesnt really talk about the physical deletion of fields.
Once Salesforce folks physically deletes these field, you should get rid of this error in most of the cases.
Cheers!
"No Clean Data Columns Found"
This is a weird kind of error. After diagnosing and breaking and cracking and thrashing my neurons into it, I realized there are three stages of deletion.
Soft Delete (You delete it and it goes in the Recycle Bin)
Hard Delete (You go to the Recycle Bin and click on Erase). Now here is the big pain. There is currently no interface in the Salesforce recycle bin that allows a mass Erase of the deleted fields. So I went about erasing each field one by one.
The third delete is called a Physical Delete. For this, you got to call the Salesforce support team as they do it for you and you cant do it yourself, unless you wait 45 days when it automatically gets deleted, and I'm sure no one can afford waiting that long.
Here is a reference to the stages of deletions: https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewSolution?urlname=How-to-retrieve-my-records-and-data-that-has-been-lost-or-deleted-1327108681812&language=en_US
So if you ever come across the error message "No Clean Data Columns Found", the only thing you can currently do is to get in touch with Salesforce support and ask them to Physically Delete the Erased fields.
Be sure to mention your Org Id otherwise they might physically delete your darling fields from a different sandbox.
There is another mention about this error here : https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewSolution?id=000126971&language=en_US which doesnt really talk about the physical deletion of fields.
Once Salesforce folks physically deletes these field, you should get rid of this error in most of the cases.
Cheers!
