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Audrey Williams 14Audrey Williams 14 

converting an exsiting text box to a dropdown box

I have an exsiting field that was built as a text box.  We are having some data entry spelling problems so I want to change this text box to a drop down box.  This field currently has data in it and I don't want to lose that information, but I want to add more information to the drop down list.  Is this possible to do?
SwethaSwetha (Salesforce Developers) 
HI Audrey,
As per salesforce documentation, https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=notes_on_changing_custom_field_types.htm&type=0 ,
"Changing the data type of an existing custom field can cause data loss in the following situations:

Changing from Text to Picklist"

However, you might want to try the approach mentioned in https://trailblazers.salesforce.com/answers?id=9063A000000pPSlQAM which is 

"1. create new picklist field
2. using reports, export text field and opportunity IDs
3. Using dataloader, import that data back into Salesforce, mapping the text field data to the new picklist field"

Related: https://trailblazers.salesforce.com/answers?id=9063A000000sxOlQAI

Hope this helps you. Please mark this answer as best so that others facing the same issue will find this information useful. Thank you