Archiving, the bin and deleting

Archiving a form

Archiving takes a form out of use without touching its records. It stops appearing in the forms list unless you turn on the toggle that shows archived forms. Its records stay readable and exportable exactly as before.

An archived form can be restored, and it comes back as a draft form — so you get to look it over before people can collect on it again.

Deleting a record

Deleting puts a record in the recycle bin for fourteen days. It disappears from the records table, from review counts, from exports, from Record Lookup sources and from phones — everywhere, not just the screen you deleted it from.

The Recycle bin page under Submissions, listing deleted records with the form, who deleted them, when, and a Restore action. — Submissions → Bin. Anything here can be restored for fourteen days after it was deleted.

Deleting a record with subform entries takes those entries with it, and Restore brings back exactly that set — not a child somebody deleted separately last week. Photographs and files are kept for the full fourteen days, so a restored record is whole.

After fourteen days the record and its files are removed for good. Deleting is a manager’s job.

Deleting a form

A form is checked for relationships first. If it is a parent of subforms, or is used as a subform elsewhere, you are shown the hierarchy before anything happens. A form that also works standalone is protected from being removed as part of somebody else’s cleanup.

The delete override destroys a form’s records deliberately, rather than binning them. It exists for forms built by mistake and test data. It does not overrule the protected-child rules, and it is not undoable by anyone. Export first.