Merge duplicate options in single select settings

[Matt_Sayward]

For some reason, I’m having the odd person create duplicate options in single select fields.

(so, say I have In Stock and Backordered as two single select options, someone could free type In Stock and add it as a third option)

It would be good if either:

a) The option to create a new single select disappeared when the text that had been entered perfectly matched an existing single select option

or

b) When opening the single select setting, you could do a quick merge of the duplicate actions.

The quickest way to do this currently is to change the field type from single select to text and back again, but this has a negative downside in that if you have any single select options not currently being used in the base, you will lose them when converting back from text to single select.

(Also a toggle to automatically keep single selects sorted alphabetically would be nice too, as would the ability to type and create new single select options from a form)

[Jospeh_DeVenuta]

I encountered the same situation today as we began applying asset tags to equipment here at the office and scanning them into Airtable. An example was there already being a product name called “MacBook” in the table, and then someone accidentally typed “Mac Book”. I would like to either be able to simply merge those two single-select value options and choose the one that remains or the text for the new merged value, or being able to change the spelling of the second option and remove the space so that both values now say “MacBook” and have them automatically merge.

Situations like this arise frequently and having some kind of merge functionality goes a LONG way in terms of improving data entry consistency and aiding with data sanitization.

[Goce_Ristov]

Merging values in single and multiple fields is a must. Sure you can go ahead and filter all the duplicate ones, modify with the new value and then remove the duplicate value completely, but that is a lot of steps and is prone to errors.

[Andrew_Taylor]

I completely agree. In my multi-select column I have these four options when I only want one:
finance, Finance and Business [which I will keep], Business, business
It’s maddening to think I have to do it manually, with many more chances to make a mistake. I tried the formula, but that just created TWO options with the same name! Both options were displayed separately as “Finance and Business.”
As I understand it, I will have to replace all of them manually after filtering for the options I don’t want within that field. Not good.

[Mathieu_Quiniou]

There is no solution still ?

[Abhijeet_Sarkar]

It’s a bit of a hack - but what I’ve done is convert the entire column to a Single Line Text, and then back into a Single Value Select. That should remove any duplicates.

[Elmawkaa_Admin]

Surprisingly this also works for Multiple Select…
Convert multiple select fields into Single Line Text and then back to multiple select field… will remove duplicates

[Mei_Yi_Yeap]

This is a bit of a workaround. I created a Kanban view. Then Moved All the entries from the status I wanna delete into the one I want to keep. Then i delete the stack for the status I want to delete. Eg. I have “Dispose” and “Consider Dumping” columns. I moved all entries from the latter to the former and then delete the Consider Dumping status