Cleaning Up Long Dropdown Lists (List Maintenance)

Most dropdowns in JewelTrak (vendor, metal, color, condition, stone shape, mounting type, etc.) let you add a new value on the fly — type something that’s not in the list and it sticks for next time. That’s a major time-saver, but over months and years the lists get noisy:

• “14k” and “14K” and “14 kt” all live as separate entries.
• Three vendors are nearly the same name with different capitalization.
• Old categories you stopped using are still polluting the picker.

Utilities → List Maintenance is where you clean these up.

Probably the most under-used tool in JewelTrak. Long, messy dropdowns are something most clients live with — they often don’t know there’s a way to fix them.

What it can do

For every dropdown list in the app, List Maintenance lets you:

• Add a new value (the same thing EditCombo does inline, just from one central place).
• Rename a value — every record that referenced the old value updates to the new one automatically.
• Delete a value, with a safety check that warns if records still reference it.

Renaming is effectively how you merge duplicates: rename “14k” → “14K” and every record using “14k” now points to “14K”. The duplicate is gone.

How to use it

1. Go to Utilities → List Maintenance.
2. The left sidebar groups every list in the app (Inventory, Stones, Contacts, etc.). Click a group to expand it, then click a list name.
3. The right pane shows every value currently in that list, with usage counts where applicable.
4. Use the row actions (✎ rename, 🗑 delete) or + Add at the top.

Some lists are scoped

A few lists are organized by parent — for example, Color values are scoped by Stone Type. The page shows the parent picker first, then the values for that parent. This matters because, e.g., the colors valid for diamonds aren’t the same as for pearls.

Tips for catching messes

• Sort by usage. Values used 0 or 1 time are usually typos or one-off entries that can be deleted or merged.
• Make a regular pass — once a year is enough for most stores. Cleaning a list of 200+ vendor names down to 80 makes every form across the app faster to use.
• Train new hires to pick from the dropdown first, only typing a new value when they’re certain it doesn’t already exist.

What to clean first

Best ROI lists to start with:

• Vendors — biggest typo magnet, used everywhere.
• Metal / Karat — wildly inconsistent capitalization is universal.
• Color and Clarity — accidental duplicates make stone reports useless.
• Condition / Style / Mounting — minor lists but they show up on every detail page.