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Can I make changes to a live Project or Form after receiving submissions?
Can I make changes to a live Project or Form after receiving submissions?

Important information to know before making changes to a live Project or Form.

Pam English avatar
Written by Pam English
Updated over a week ago

We recommend making sure that your Project—and the forms used in it—are in their best and most final state before launching and receiving submissions. Occasionally, however, you may need to make changes after you've already received submissions to your live Project.

As a general rule, adding something to a Form in a Project, or editing existing portions of a Form inside a Project (to fix a typo, for example), is not a problem. However, removing fields from a live Form may cause unwanted changes for existing submissions. Please be sure this is going to be acceptable before removing anything from a Form in a live Project. This article explains what you should expect if you do have to make certain changes to a live Project.
If a new required field is added to a published Form, submitters will not be able to submit the altered form until they fill out the required field.
Note: Any time you make changes to a live Form, you will see the following warning upon saving:

Adding Form Fields

Adding form fields to a form within your Project is generally okay to do. It can even be a useful workflow if you need some additional information from your initial submitters. After adding a field to a Form, the addition will update automatically in your live Project. If appropriate, you can open any previously received submissions for editing, and request that those submitters complete the newly added fields.

Note: Existing submissions will show "n/a" as the response (for both the organization view and the submitter view) in the new field unless it is edited.

Removing Form Fields

As with adding elements to a Form in a live Project, removing anything from a Form within a live Project will take effect immediately. Any form element you remove that was previously visible in a Form will no longer be visible on existing submissions. With this in mind, you want to be careful about removing anything. Be sure to only remove questions or responses that you know will not be needed in the future—this applies to all existing and future submissions. Be aware that anything you remove will remove it from your organization's view as well as the submitter's view.

Editing Response Options

It is okay to add or edit response options in a Multiple Response field. But be aware that removing an option will cause it to be irretrievably removed from all existing submissions. If you change the wording of a response option, it will also change in any existing submissions. For example, if a question asks What is your favorite color? with the first response option "blue," changing that option to "red" would also change previously submitted responses to "red."

Adjusting Branching

Adjusting branching in a live Project will immediately reflect the changes that are made. If you add new fields to a branching structure, you can then open existing submissions for editing and allow submitters to access the updated branch structure. If you remove branching from form fields, but do not remove the questions from the form, the questions will remain visible.

Adding or Replacing Table Fields

You can add a table field to a live form and it will be immediately available for applicants. If you open existing submissions for editing, those submitters will be able to access and complete the added table field. If you replace a table from an existing table field with a new .xlsx file, this will remove any information previously submitted in the removed table. In general, you will not want to remove or replace existing table fields unless you are sure that you will not need any existing data.

Changing Auto Labels

Changing auto labels will only affect submissions received after this change. Existing submissions will not retroactively update based on a change. Auto labels applied to existing submissions will not be removed if auto labeling is turned off in a form field.

Changing Terms of Use

If the optional Terms of Use conditions are changed after a Project is made Live, only new submitters will see the change. Previous submitters will not be notified about any changes to the Terms of Use after they've submitted, nor will they see these changes if the submission is opened for editing at any point.


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