Can you tell me the exact steps you are doing? How are you republishing? If you created a web map with the feature service in it, the web map would have a copy of the attribute fields, so you would need to remove/add the layer again.
Feature class stored in SDE has two fields removed, reopen MXD to be republished to arcgis.com, do an overwrite and view the published feature class REST interface and the fields will still be there.
It looks like the service definition has been updated - ie. the datetime stamp has changed but the feature service isn't.
I'm probably missing something in the workflow.
Does it matter that the service definition and feature service are moved to a subdirectory in arcgis.com and then overwritten?
I seem to be having a similar issue since I switched to 10.2. I've tried to overwrite an existing service and nothing seems to happen. After the warning message about losing data that has been edited in the service, I press next and the window goes away with no further messages. I tried removing the feature service from the web map and re-adding it but it doesn't matter; the service was never updated.
As far as I can see yes only to the root. But you can move after.... though if you've got a scheduled task to update I wouldn't move it out of the root.
It's in my root folder so that must be a different problem. I'm running out of ideas on how to handle updates. Deleting the FS and re-serving it is an option in this case, but with services that other people have built maps with it would pose problems because the service would have a new ID.
ESRI, is there another way to do overwrites in AGOL?
I find if I change the data structure I have to rename the service. It's been the only sure fire way, though I'm sure someone at ESRI told me you have to delete it from the map and readd it and it will have the modifications..
I've got some feature services with the number 5 or 6 or bigger after them.
I've not had any luck in AGOL overwriting or updating an existing service from 10.1, I delete the service, then upload the updates using the same name and all my maps seem to pick it up. I've just upgraded to 10.2 and was hoping this has improved...