Change Survey 123 field length after publishing

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07-31-2020 08:23 AM
SarahHartholt
Occasional Contributor III

Is it possible to change Survey 123 field lengths AFTER the survey has already been published? I have an active survey with a multi line question. The esri:fieldLength cell is currently blank (defaults to 255 characters). I'm wondering if it will cause an error if I increase this value to 1000 and re-publish the survey considering this cannot be done in a typical attribute table (FAQ: Can the field length in an attribute table be modified? ).

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ZacharySutherby
Esri Regular Contributor

Hello Sarah Hartholt‌, 

Updating the field length will require the hosted feature service to be republished and will delete all previously collected data. 

"You will see a message along the lines Field <fieldName> in <surveyName> length is too short 255"

Please use this link for reference regarding changes that can be made without deleting the current feature service: Publish your survey—Survey123 for ArcGIS | Documentation 

A couple of options moving forward, as noted in the article you linked you can add the field to the hosted feature service with the field length you would like. You can then field calculate that new field with the existing values from the old field. In your XLSForm you can remove the old text field and add the name of the new text field, since the schema matches you should be able to update the survey without deleting the existing feature service. 

Another option would be to download your existing survey results as a file geodatabase, overwrite the survey which will delete the existing data, and append the file geodatabase to the new feature service. This option is a lot more finicky and has a lot more room for additional issues. 

Thank you, 

Zach 

Thank you,
Zach

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ZacharySutherby
Esri Regular Contributor

Hello Sarah Hartholt‌, 

Updating the field length will require the hosted feature service to be republished and will delete all previously collected data. 

"You will see a message along the lines Field <fieldName> in <surveyName> length is too short 255"

Please use this link for reference regarding changes that can be made without deleting the current feature service: Publish your survey—Survey123 for ArcGIS | Documentation 

A couple of options moving forward, as noted in the article you linked you can add the field to the hosted feature service with the field length you would like. You can then field calculate that new field with the existing values from the old field. In your XLSForm you can remove the old text field and add the name of the new text field, since the schema matches you should be able to update the survey without deleting the existing feature service. 

Another option would be to download your existing survey results as a file geodatabase, overwrite the survey which will delete the existing data, and append the file geodatabase to the new feature service. This option is a lot more finicky and has a lot more room for additional issues. 

Thank you, 

Zach 

Thank you,
Zach