You’ve run into one of the more painful Survey123 “gotchas” — once you change the schema of a published form (renaming fields, adding/removing questions), the local database on the device no longer matches the hosted feature layer. That’s why your Outbox refuses to sync.
Why this happens
The SQLite database on the tablet (the Survey123 field app’s local store) was created with the old schema.
After you republished with a corrected field name, the server has the new schema.
Sync fails because ArcGIS can’t reconcile the column mismatch.
Options to rescue the data
1. Try to Sync with the old schema
If possible, roll back:
In Survey123 Connect, rename the field back to the original error name.
Republish so the feature layer matches what the Outbox is expecting.
Then sync.
Once all outbox records are on the server, fix the schema again and migrate data with ArcGIS field calculator or Python.
➡️ This is usually the fastest/safest way if you can tolerate the “bad” field name temporarily.
2. Export directly from the device
On Android: navigate to Android/data/com.esri.survey123/files/ArcGIS/My Surveys/databases/
Each survey has an SQLite .sqlite database. Open it with DB Browser for SQLite or Python (sqlite3).
Tables:
You can export to CSV/Excel manually or with Python (pandas.read_sql).
3. Python path (ArcGIS API for Python)
If you already extracted the local .sqlite, you can read:
import sqlite3, pandas as pd
conn = sqlite3.connect("path_to_survey.sqlite")
df = pd.read_sql("SELECT * FROM main", conn)
df.to_excel("survey_backup.xlsx", index=False)
For attachments:
✅ Recommended next step for you:
If you still have the old XLSForm (with the original “wrong” field name), republish that version, let the devices sync, then repair field names after everything is safely on the server.
