My yes/no column has five different spellings

A column that only ever means yes or no contains several spellings of each.

Why it happens

  • Nothing constrained the column.
  • Filters and lookups compare exact strings, so each spelling is its own value.
  • An empty cell is the genuinely ambiguous one.

What to do now

  1. List the distinct values in the column before deciding anything.
  2. Map each spelling to one of two values deliberately, rather than filtering for the spelling you happen to have thought of.
  3. Decide what blank means and record that decision.

Next time

A boolean field accepts the spellings people actually write, case-insensitively: true, yes, y, 1, x, on, and checked all arrive as yes, and false, no, n, 0, off, and unchecked all arrive as no.

Start from the new hires template.

Related problems

Set your fields once

Every file after that is checked before anything lands.