Standardize a status column so every capitalization spelling counts as one value

The same status shows up as Active, active, and ACTIVE, and every grouped report I run treats the three spellings as separate values instead of one.

Intermediate to advancedRead 6 minDoing: 25 to 40 minutes to count, decide, fix, and verify; a few more minutes if you add the guard constraint too6 steps

▶ Start

What you'll have at the end

A standardized status column where every spelling variant rolls into one grouped count

Before you start

You need

Write access to a table with a status-like column that a GROUP BY report groups by, and permission to run UPDATE against it (ALTER TABLE too, if you also want the last step's guard).

Not covered

Merging values that are genuinely misspelled rather than just differently capitalized, and standardizing dates or currency formats.

Leans on

6 steps

Where to go next

Find near-duplicate customers with fuzzy SQL matching

when a raw value differs by more than case, like a genuine misspelling, that this recipe's fold won't merge

Checked 26 Aug 2026

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