This is going to be very short note for readers and pretty much possible that you already know about problem and its solution. However, lets discuss problem first.
On External Object, we do get an option to create a lookup field. It looks very straight forward first, that create a lookup field and populate value in it. Below image shows, what happens when you try to populate newly created lookup field on External Object.
Did you observed, that Lookup field on External Object does not retain any value in Salesforce? Salesforce should have given some proper error message either while creating this field or after updating record.
What is External Object in Salesforce ? This is kind of virtual object which does not exists in your Org. So, you created a field on Object which does not exists and then tried to populate it, what else you could have imagined ?
Resolution of this situation is very easy and would make lot of sense. Same solution applies to External Lookup field as well in Salesforce. All you have to do is, create a new field in Source system of type text first (length 18) and Sync your External Data Source so that new field will appear in your / destination Org. Now edit field’s data type to lookup or External lookup and it will work as expected.
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