Data from question groups lost when submitting finalized forms

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#1

1. What is the problem? Be very detailed.

I have a form where all the questions are in four different groups, the last of which is a repeated group. I had made a change to the form before filling out the surveys, and deleted the old blank form and replaced it with the new version. My surveys consists of visiting a site, which has multiple sample points, with each point containing multiple trees.

The first group of questions concerned the site. The next two groups were specific to the sample points, and the last (repeated) group was for trees. Initially, the last three groups had also been wrapped inside another repeat group, but I removed the repeat so that instead a new form would be filled out for each sample point. This change was to allow for geo points at each sample point to appear on the map within ODKcollect.

I had deleted the old form, and changed the google sheets url (for submission) to a new sheet. But, I didn't know about form versions, so I didn't change that. We then completed a days worth of surveys. When I tried to submit the surveys, I got the error message "not exactly one blank form matches this jr_form_id", which I now know had to do with me editing the old version of the form. So, I changed the version number of the form, and deleted the old blank form, and uploaded the blank form with the new version number onto my device. Now I was able to submit as per usual.

Except, when the files were submitted, only the data from the first group of questions showed up in the spreadsheet. The sheet made two more tabs- one for the repeat group which doesn't even exist on this version of the form, and the second for repeat group which does. Both tabs are completely blank.

When I look at the filled forms on my device, I can also only see the first group. What's weird, is that I can correctly see the geopoints from the sent forms on the map on the device, even though the geopoint was in one of the question groups which has disappeared.

Is there anyway to get this data back? What happened here?

2. What app or server are you using and on what device and operating system? Include version numbers.
ODKcollect on a android tablet with google drive as the server
3. What you have you tried to fix the problem?
I've tried resending the forms, and re-uploading the blank form, with no luck.

#2

One other thing I have tried is downloading the collect directory onto my computer. I can see all the XML files, and they seem to have all the correct data. But, when I do a pull command from ODK briefcase and export, only one (out of 17) of the instance files is placed into the .csv. I haven't used ODK briefcase before, so I could be doing it incorrectly. I haven't deleted any of the files from the tablet yet either, besides the blank forms.

#3

Just wanted to update that I have resolved this issue.

Steps I needed to take:

  1. On the device, go to project setting -> reset -> reset blank forms
  2. manually place the updated xml with the old version number (the same version number of the blank form that was used to create the surveys) into the odkcollect project directory in the form folder on the device
  3. submit final forms as per usual

What is interesting/frustrating is that using the "delete saved form" option and "get blank form" option didn't work to solve this issue. My guess is what caused the problem in the first place was making a significant change a form (which changed the way keys/ spreadsheet tabs are created) without changing the version number, and then changing the version number after I had already tried to submit the finalized forms. Mostly I'm just happy that I didn't lose an entire day's worth of work!

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