Custom Field Blanked Out When Removed from the Custom Form

[Former Community Member]

Hi all,

I'm replacing a custom field with a new field, and when I tested the process in Sandbox environment, all the original data was removed from that filed. I going to have to work-around this in this occasion, but is this expected behaviour?

Thanks

Matt

[skyehansen · Accepted solution]

yes. If you replace a field with an entirely new field, you're expected to move the data into the new field as well. We usually hide the old field in an admin-only section of the form for a brief period of time until we're sure that it needs to be removed.

[KatherineLa]

I will typically do as Skye described above, and then build a report for myself that shows every instance of the old field that's been filled out with the new field side by side. If I have minimal data/records entered, I'll just get a cup of coffee and copy/paste for a few minutes.

If I have extensive data that copy/paste isn't reasonably feasible, then I use a Fusion loop to get all of the records with data in that field and then copy it into the new field. I do NOT use Fusion to remove data from the old field though. I figure if the copy portion goes sideways, I've got an annoying mess to clean-up. If the delete portion does something unexpected, I've got a lot of irritated people and not enough coffee.

Downloading the original dataset before starting any of this can also sometimes help mitigate hiccups.