Pardot and Account Engagement · sync errors
Twelve sync errors,
and the exact message each one shows.
Sync failures do not announce themselves. A prospect enters the error queue, five things stop working at once, and nothing on either dashboard changes colour. Below is every message, why it appears, and what to do, so you can read your own queue tonight.
Reviewed 26 August 2026.
Before the twelve
Where the queue lives, and what stops when a record lands in it.
Pardot settings, then Connectors, then the Salesforce connector, then the gear icon, then Sync Errors. The view gives the error type, the prospect, the prospect id, the message and the timestamp. Export it monthly and keep the counts, because a spike tells you something changed in Salesforce last week and the absolute number does not.
When a prospect enters that queue, five things stop at once. Pardot changes stop reaching Salesforce. Salesforce changes stop reaching Pardot. The prospect keeps collecting engagement nobody acts on. Reports on the two sides quietly diverge. And a rep opens a record that has not moved since the day the error started, and draws a conclusion about the prospect rather than about the connector.
Error 01
Field Integrity Exception
What Salesforce says: There is a problem with this country or state, even though it may appear correct.
The value violates a Salesforce field constraint, almost always a country or state picklist that has state and country picklists switched on. The value looks right to a human and is not in the allowed list.
What to do: Compare what Pardot is sending against the exact allowed values in Salesforce, character for character. Then fix it at the source, in the form or the import, rather than per prospect.
Error 02
Custom Validation Exception
What Salesforce says: Custom Validation Exception: field must be populated.
A Salesforce validation rule blocks the update because Pardot did not send the data it requires. Usually somebody added a rule after the connector was configured, and nobody told the person who owns the forms.
What to do: Find which rule fired, then decide deliberately: either Pardot starts sending the field, or the rule stops applying to records the connector touches.
Error 03
Invalid Picklist Value
What Salesforce says: Bad value for restricted picklist field.
Pardot is sending a value that does not exist in the Salesforce picklist. The usual cause is a value removed or renamed on the Salesforce side while the Pardot field kept the old list.
What to do: Align both lists and decide which system owns them. A restricted picklist with two owners produces this error again within a quarter.
Error 04
Dependent picklist conflict
What Salesforce says: Appears as Field Integrity Exception or Invalid Picklist Value, and the values look correct.
State values depend on the country selected. A combination that is valid separately is invalid together, which is why inspection of either field alone finds nothing wrong.
What to do: Check the pair, not the field. The failing record has a country and state that Salesforce does not accept in combination.
Error 05
CRM Deleted
What Salesforce says: The prospect exists in Pardot and is flagged CRM Deleted.
Somebody deleted the Lead or Contact in Salesforce instead of the prospect in Pardot. The prospect stays, keeps collecting engagement, and syncs nowhere.
What to do: This is the one that does the most damage over time because it is silent and it accumulates. Restore from the Salesforce recycle bin if it is recent, and agree who is allowed to delete records at all.
Error 06
Insufficient Access
What Salesforce says: Insufficient access rights on object id.
The connector user lacks read or write permission on an object, a field or a record type. The errors arrive in clusters around one object rather than scattered, which is how you recognise it before reading the message.
What to do: Check field level security and record type access for the connector user specifically, not for a profile that looks similar.
Error 07
Duplicate value found
What Salesforce says: Duplicate value found: unknown duplicates value on record with id.
Pardot cannot decide between two Salesforce records, most often a Lead and a Contact sharing one email address.
What to do: Resolve the duplicate in Salesforce and then decide the matching order, because the next duplicate arrives whether or not this one was cleaned.
Error 08
Sync queue overload
What Salesforce says: A burst of errors clustered around one timestamp, with hundreds or thousands of records pending.
A mass import pushed more simultaneous updates than the Salesforce side could process through its flows, validation rules and triggers.
What to do: Import in batches rather than at once. The error is a symptom of volume, so fixing individual records achieves nothing.
Error 09
Required fields are missing
What Salesforce says: Required fields are missing, with the field named.
A field was made required in Salesforce while existing prospects have it empty. Every sync attempt fails until the value exists.
What to do: Recognisable by the shape: a sudden spike, all naming the same field. Backfill the value or reverse the requirement.
Error 10
Field type mismatch
What Salesforce says: The message references type incompatibility rather than a value.
Text going into a numeric field, a date string a date field rejects, or text longer than the Salesforce field allows. Usually arrives in batches from one source: a form, an import or an integration.
What to do: Match the types on both sides, and check the length limit, which is the one people forget.
Error 11
Operation with invalid user type
What Salesforce says: Operation not valid for this user type.
The connector user has a licence that does not permit connector operations. The common cause is somebody downgrading that user to save a licence.
What to do: The errors track the connector identity rather than any data pattern, which is how you tell this apart from everything above.
Error 12
Cannot execute flow trigger
What Salesforce says: The record could not be saved because it failed to trigger a flow.
A Salesforce flow fires on the Lead or Contact update coming from Pardot and fails. The sync error is the symptom; the fault is in the flow.
What to do: Read the flow error, not the sync error. Every minute spent on the connector here is wasted, because the connector did its job.
Reading the number
How I read the size of the queue.
These are working thresholds rather than a published standard. They are how I decide whether a queue is maintenance or a symptom, and they have held across the orgs I have opened.
Under fifty
Healthy. A quarterly look is enough. Watch for sudden spikes rather than the absolute number, because a spike means something changed in Salesforce last week.
Fifty to two hundred
Acceptable. Monthly review, group by type, and fix the largest one or two patterns rather than working through the list.
Two hundred to five hundred
Something systemic is running. Weekly review until the cause is found, and expect two or three root causes rather than one.
Above five hundred
The handoff between marketing and sales is not working, whatever the dashboards say. At this size the queue is not a maintenance task, it is the problem.
Asked often enough to answer here
Questions
Where do I find Pardot sync errors?
Pardot settings, then Connectors, then the Salesforce connector, then the gear icon, then Sync Errors. The view shows the error type, the affected prospect, the prospect id, the message and the timestamp. Export it monthly and keep the counts, because the trend tells you more than any single reading.
What actually stops working when a prospect is in the error queue?
Five things at once. Changes in Pardot stop reaching Salesforce, so form submissions, scoring updates and list membership stay on one side. Changes in Salesforce stop reaching Pardot, so owner and status updates never arrive. The prospect keeps collecting engagement that nobody acts on. Reports on both sides quietly disagree. And sales sees a record that has not moved since the day the error started.
How many sync errors are too many?
Under fifty is fine, above five hundred means the handoff is broken. Between those, the number matters less than the trend and the mix: two hundred errors of one type is one fix, two hundred spread across nine types is a configuration that nobody owns.
What does it cost to fix?
2,000 euro for 40 hours, about two weeks. That is the audit of the queue, the root causes grouped rather than the records fixed one by one, the fixes themselves, and monitoring that reports to a person instead of sitting in a screen nobody opens. The same work is described from the symptom side as records going missing between systems.
Can we just clear the queue and move on?
You can, and it comes back, usually within the quarter. Every error in the list above has a cause on the Salesforce side or in the data being sent, and clearing the queue removes the evidence without removing the cause. The exception is the queue overload pattern, where clearing is genuinely the fix and the lesson is about batch size.
€2,000 for 40 hours. That number sits below what a partner would quote, and it is deliberate rather than a discount: no delivery manager, no partner margin, and the market rates are published here so you can place it yourself.
Serhii Skrypnyk · Senior Salesforce Administrator and developer · 7 Salesforce certifications · on the platform since 2018. Reviewed 26 August 2026.