This issue occurs when Salesforce automation overrides the value set by the merge action. For example: In this case, the user ran a document merge expecting it to update:
While the Acknowledgement Date updated correctly, the Acknowledgement Status remained set to “To Be Acknowledged.”
During troubleshooting, the merge action was rerun and produced the same result. To rule out a merge configuration issue, a manual update of the Acknowledgement Status field was attempted directly on the Salesforce record, and that update was also blocked. This confirmed the issue was not related to the merge setup itself.
Further investigation revealed a record-triggered Salesforce Flow as the root cause:
In Setup → Object Manager → Gift, there was a flow named
“Received Updates Acknowledgement Status to To Be Acknowledged.”
This flow actively overrides any change made to the Acknowledgement Status field.
As a result:
Manual field updates are blocked.
Updates made by the merge action are also overwritten.
Because this automation runs after the merge, it prevents the status from being updated to “Acknowledged.”
To resolve the issue, the customer was advised to:
Review the flow with their Salesforce administrator or the user who created it.
Modify or deactivate the flow logic (if appropriate).
Once the flow behavior is adjusted, the merge action will be able to update the Acknowledgement Status as expected.