Data Integrity: Mass editing text to picklist

Recently, we migrated data from a source to CRM 4.0. The client's previous field was a textfield but they wanted to control the data in a picklist in their new CRM system. In order to keep all of the information, we migrated the data from a textfield into a textfield. (If you try to map values from a textfield into a picklist, you can run into many errors if the data isn't scrubbed well).

In order to update the picklist in an efficient manner, I instructed the client to create an Advanced Find that displayed the picklist and textfield, filtered where the picklist was null and ordered by the textfield. This way you can look at what should be similar (in not the same) values in the textfield, can highlight the records and then mass edit the picklist to equal the correct value. When you have done several records, you can refresh the search result and it will only return the records that still need to be updated.

I have seen people do similar updates in more taxing ways and wanted to post my thoughts on what should be an easy (although slightly manual) way of keeping the integrity of your data.

Thanks,
Mark