Update a form without losing responses

[Julian_gp]

Is it possible to update a form without losing the results that have been obtained in the previous version?

[aurdipas]

https://docs.getodk.org/central-forms/#updating-forms-to-a-new-version

What happens to my submissions?

When a new Form version is published in place of an old one, all the previous submissions remain unchanged, and will export along with all your data. However, by default, only the current Form definition will be used in exports: if, for example, you have deleted a field that used to exist, that field will not appear in the export. You can configure this when exporting data.

Draft testing submissions will never export with your final data, and only exist as long as the Draft does. If you delete, publish, or replace your current Draft, all test submissions will be cleared away.

[aurdipas]

Dear @Julian_gp
I just realized that you ask support for Aggregate.
There are limitations to update a form definition in Aggregate, but if your requirement fall in the possible changes then after you update it the previous submissions will not be deleted, but they will remain unchanged.

https://docs.getodk.org/aggregate-form-update/

[danbjoseph]

Please note that Aggregate is no longer being supported. Central is now the ODK server. The post below has more details about the end-of-life for Aggregate.

Aggregate is no longer being updated

In accordance with the plans announced at Upcoming changes to Aggregate, the core team is no longer updating Aggregate. We will not fix bugs, add features, review PRs, improve documentation, release new versions, or answer support questions. We've been communicating this reality to users over the last two years through the documentation, code repo, and in community announcements. The core team (and the @TAB) believe that Central is production ready and better than Aggregate for most users, so …

We strongly recommend using Central, as Aggregate has not been patched for security, reliability, and other issues since May 2021 when it reached end-of-life.

[Saad]

On aggregate, upload the new form with different form_id, and use the new form. Only this way you can save the previous submissions.

[aurdipas]

Hi @Saad ,
this is not exactly true.
It depends on the change made please read here:

..."If you use the same filename, you can upload the form and ODK Aggregate will automatically replace the old version and keep the existing form data"

[Saad]

Thanks for the correction. What I meant to suggest to him is to upload the new version as a new form, totally separate from the old form. This way he can save the previous entries.