Confusing display in a dropdown

Did you use the specific ACF column type for your column, or did you use the Custom Field column? When using the specific ACF column, I won’t expect this behavior to happen. Might it be the case that you switched from a single Select field to a multiple field?

On ACF settings, the custom field is a checkbox with no fancy parameters. There’s just a list of options. I tried the ACF column as I was using the Custom Field one (BTW thanks for the hint) and it’s outputting different results. I’ve checked in the DB for the user meta field and actually what I previously had was actually the reality of the values… It’s a mess between slugs, readable labels and json :-/.
You’re probably right to point that we might have switched single and multiple select.

I’ve just tried to edit an account in the user page and checking in DB proved that ACF is also using json (not surprising) so in the DB it changed from Air Austral to a:1:{i:0;s:11:"Air Austral";}.

As far I understand, changing the field type induced a mess in the DB and I should change everything from readable label or slug to json value.

What do you think ?

Yes, you’re right. When you change the field type in ACF from a single Select to a Checkbox for example, the way the data is stored also changed, resulting in inconsistent data storage. Although for display purposes, this can quite easily be fixed in the logic to display it, in order for our (pro) features to work, it does matter which format is used, so the data must be consistent.

In such cases as yours, I would probably run an update script to make sure the storage of that specific field is consistent, in this case, stored as JSON. Or if you have a small dataset, you could consider using a different key, but of course, that will leave you with unused deprecated values in your database for a key that no longer exists.

thanks Stefan for considering my issue. I’ll mark it a completed as I just have to update the DB with SQL. I’ve started and AC is rendering in the right way.