When you try convert a field/column from a Single Line text field to Single Select field, fields go missing

Technical Help
1

Are you using our SaaS platform (Baserow.io) or self-hosting Baserow?

SaaS

What are the exact steps to reproduce this issue?

  1. Import an excel sheet to use as a new table in Baserow
  2. Select header of a column and click ‘Edit Field’. It is currently a Single line text type field.
  3. From the field type dropdown, change your selection from ‘Single line text’ [current selection] to ‘Single select’
  4. Click Save
  5. The column updates but a number of random cells (that were previously filled with text) throughout the column go blank/empty

Attach screenshots, videos, or logs that demonstrate the issue.

Screenshot 2026-05-18 103758.png
Screenshot 2026-05-18 103758.png472×593 23.4 KB

2

Hey @markusername, just to confirm, were the values that disappeared just short text values?

3

Yes all short text values

4

And after the import, all the values were there, right? So they disappeared only after you changed the field type?

5

Yes all the values were there after import & yes they then disappeared after I changed the field type

6

I just tried to reproduce the flow, but it’s working for me. Does that file contain many rows?

7

112 rows in the excel sheet i uploaded

8

I suspect that more than 100 of them are unique values, and we have a limitation when converting a text field into a single select field, where the frontend only retrieves unique values with limit=100, limiting the number of options to 100.

Could that be the reason? Or do you have fewer than 100 unique values in that field?

9

No there’s probably only 30-40 unique values in the field

10

Hey @markusername, that’s strange. Could you please try again?