Re: Changing Boolean Field To Picklist

David_Cutsinge4
Level 2

Changing Boolean Field To Picklist

We have Boolean fields with the values Yes/No which are widely used within our instance and workspaces. This field should not be used in any forms and is not connected to our CRM in any way. If we were to change this to a picklist (With three values of Yes/No/Unsub), is there a good understanding of what will occur? For instance:

1) Will leads hold their current value of Yes or No?

2) Will leads have their current value reset? 

Any insights would be very much appreciated.

3 REPLIES 3
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Changing Boolean Field To Picklist

  • Picklist is not a Marketo datatype.
  • Select, a common synonym for a picklist, is a form input type (not a back-end datatype).
  • Select is typically (though not always) backed by a String field.
  • Booleans are not stored as "Yes" or "No" on the back end.
  • Booleans are true/false values that happen to be stringified -- not stored -- as the lower-case Strings "yes" or "no" in some (but certainly not all) contexts.
  • Changing a Boolean to a String will delete all values. This means that true and false will become an empty String.

Bottom line, this is a destructive act.  You almost certainly do not want this, but rather you should create a new field, use a Smart Campaign to copy old values, then hide the old field. Alternately you could export everyone whose Boolean is true before changing the datatype and then reimport them.

David_Cutsinge4
Level 2

Re: Changing Boolean Field To Picklist

Thanks, Sanford Whiteman‌!

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Changing Boolean Field To Picklist

Sure, can you mark my answer as Correct, please?