how to identify problematic survey123 field

Question

Hi guys

i have created a form in survey123 which was successfully published and used to capture data. Ever since the form has changed for some reason and now re publishing the survey will cause all records to be deleted.

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/updating-field-types-in-existing-survey123-surveys/ba-p/898543

i have found this guidance, however i do NOT know which field is causing the problem.

How do i identify the field that has caused this? is there a way i can find the form that originally published the survey?

Nicole_Ueberschär · Accepted Answer

Hi @DionysiosKerasidis1 , did you publish the form online or through Survey123 Connect? If you published it through Connect, I would make a backup of the form (xlsx file) that you have locally stored (I usually move the whole folder to a different location where I keep all my forms that I am not currently working on) and download the form as it was published. If it is very complex it might be a bit tiresome to visually check for differences. If you are not aware of any changes that were made I would keep the downloaded version for future edits.

I usually start by comparing the schema in Survey123 and the one of the layer in ArcGIS Online. It might be that you didn't specify a field type before and now changed it to being a number for example. That would cause this type of error.

Nicole_Ueberschär · Accepted Answer

Not sure if I get your question right. When you sign in into your ArcGIS Online account in Survey123 Connect you see all the surveys that were published together with the ones you designed maybe in Connect but did not publish. If the online version differs from your local version it should show an update button or if you don't have it locally then you see the download button. When I see the update option but I am not aware that any updates were made, I usually move the folder with that survey into a new location, reload the page and the download the survey to make sure that I am working on the latest version.

Does this answer your question?