Publishing A Survey Stuck on "Creating form Item" - This survey successfully published previously

[GarrettRSmith]

Hello Everyone

I am trying to publish a survey from Connect because the original got corrupted when I tried to update and republish with some minor edits to some of the wording in the Label and Hint fields. No data was collected with the original and I was the only one to download it. When I tried to update, it would not complete the update sequence. I had to force quit Connect and when I reopened Connect there was a new icon of the same survey that was asking me to download it because I was no longer on my device (Note: this one now has three for some reason).

When I downloaded this version that was apparently not on my computer and opened it, the folder name was completely different from the original and when I tried to publish either the new or existing survey it told me that neither of the surveys had been published yet. When I tried to publish the newly downloaded survey it gets caught on the "Creating form item" step:

However, when I log into Survey123.esri.com, I see two surveys, but I am not sure that I can trust that this survey will actually work for people in the field and how I can actually make edits to it if it says that it is not on my computer.

I know that this survey has worked before since it was previously uploaded with no issues.

Here are the steps I have taken to try and correct this, all of which are also leading to the publishing of the survey from Connect being stuck at the "Creating form item" step.

1. Delete both surveys, including all associated files from Connect, AGOL, and Survey123 online and my computer's hard drive. 
2. Create a new survey from a version of the original .xlsx file that I had saved on my computer in another location. 
3. Delete the survey from step 2 and create a completely new survey from scratch.

For each of the last two surveys I used names that were unique.

I did read that it might be hanging up on this step because of the size of my media folder that contains a number of images as you can see below from my most recent attempt (Please note that these are the exact same files that I used in the original that successfully published and I had no issue):

The thumbnail image is for the survey's thumbnail, I have always put it in this location. 

Another thing, that might be happening, is that the organization whose account that I am publishing this to is out of credits when I log into ArcGIS Online. However, as with all the previous explanations, I was able to successfully publish my original survey with the organization being out of credits.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. I am not sure how this survey worked originally and now seems cursed when all I did was change some wording in the Label and Hint fields. 

[GarrettRSmith]

****Update**********

I tried the following:

1. Reducing the file sizes for each of the images in my media folder, it is now 166MB.
2. Using another ArcGIS Online account that is not out of Credits.

I am still having the same issue of the publishing getting hung up at the "Creating form item".

I guess my next step is to delete all of the photos from the media folder, which I have seen suggested on these community boards.

[DougBrowning · Accepted solution]

116 MB is rather large for the media folder.  I had to work mine down to 21 MB and it still stalls out at times.  I used a online compressor to get them as small as I could.  I would try to make them smaller.  The tablet will also struggle to download this much.

One thing that helped was to publish first with no media then publish a second time with the media in there.  I have to do that every time I make a new one of these forms.

[GarrettRSmith]

Hi @DougBrowning. Thanks so much for the recommendation. I ended up reducing the media folder size to 41mb via a batch process in Photoshop. I published the survey with no media initially and then placed the images in the media folder and updated the survey and all seems to be working now.