What are some best practices for renaming values in choice fields? For example, let's say I have a choice field with 30 selectable choices. The business is requesting that appx 15 of these choice selections be renamed. For example: Before Choice A Choice B Choice C After Choice A1 Choice B1 Choice C1 If I were to just do the rename, this would causes issues with the older items (I edit an item where Choice A was selected and it now appears as if there are no selections since none of the existing choices match the current list of choices). Now I could manually fix all Choice A to Choice A1 and so forth through a custom view, but that seems like it would take a long time. Additionally, many end-users have alerts set up to notify them of any item changes. I don't want to blast out 1000 alert notifications doing a bulk update to force the choice columns to a new valid choice. Any best practices here or suggestions?

Hi Sephiroth0327, You can consider using lookup field to replace choice. For the alert issue, you can temporarily disable the alert function. After finishing the transfer, you can recovery the alert. For more information about how to use a lookup table, please refer to the following articles: http://www.sharepointkings.com/2008/07/sharepoint-column-lookup-information.html http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2007/10/29/tips-and-tricks-use-a-lookup-table-instead-of-a-choice-dropdown-list/ Regards, Rock Wang Microsoft Online Community Support

You can consider using lookup field to replace choice. For the alert issue, you can temporarily disable the alert function. After finishing the transfer, you can recovery the alert. This is a nice alternative, but does not help in my situation. My Choice type field is used as a set of Checkboxes. The Lookup type does allow for multiple values, too, but the select/add form element takes up just too much space on my customized form. Is there a "best practice" for resolving Sephiroth0327's original question? Seems to me, a "quick and dirty" solution would be: Add the new "future" choice values along-side the current values (DO NOT rename or remove the old values)Add the Choice column to a View (if not already)Use SharePoint list's Actions > Edit in Datasheet Either: (a) manually tick/untick for each record, or (b) fix one cell then copy/paste into similar cells Once done, remove the old choice values. Open to other suggestions, such as this one from msdn.