Download data from files before changes were made

I am unable to download previously filled data. I made changes and re-deployed the form. I exported the previous versions. But older exported files are also not visible. How can i fetch the previous data in the form?

i dont know if i have well understood , but you can just download the data include data from all other versions , then filter the data based on version when processing

An entire section is showing as blank. I made changes to the form, but up untill yesterday the section was showing as filled. But now its gone. I have clicked on “download all versions”. My export history is also showing only recent files. Is there a limit to how many export history Kobo toolbox shows?

ok ok , now i understand your problem. its the same mistake i did last few month. You added some relevance in the new form which affacted the old .
Here is a trick:
You have 1. Old version form 2. New version form

1- Download you data including all version as a backup
2.- Replace the form (upload the old form version on kobo server) then redeploy
3 - Download all the data which will now obey the old form
4- After downloading the data (keep a backup copy of the data)
5-Re-upload and redploy the new version of the form.

I hope this solves your issue

If you dont have the old version form; go to form history and duplicate the form version which you thinks was the older version into a new project and then download its xlsx

When i clone the project, its only downloading a blank xls sheet.

Do you have the old form ?? Do you have the new version form?

I yes you can just skip the clone thing

@Kal_Lam, @Xiphware,

could someone from the core team confirm and explain this, please: How can a (new) relevant clause filter data from a previous form/submission? (table and modal view, export).

If this is true, a new relevant clause could be used as work-around to hide a part of the submitted data, e.g. name of responent.

Sure , lets wait for their answer,
However my experience on this was on odk central server, of which i believe they share much of the main processing simillaries with KObo Servers

I could not find the previous file. I think if I could upload the exact older code list it may give me the result. But otherwise all entered data is blank. Even previous export history is not visible. only the recent history is. which means files that i downloaded earlier (which i did not save format for) are lost.

But thank you @pruzige your suggestion was helpful. unfortunately i don’t have the older code list files.

Ok, but you can always duplicate the form version into a new project and download that form from the new project

Has anyone tested whether adding a relevant clause after submissions can actually filter out data when exporting?

It does so , thhough it occured to me while i was using odk central

I’ve just tried this myself and making a question explicitly non-relevant in a new version of the form does not cause the field in previously submitted submissions to be lost when subsequently exporting the entire data.

In this form I originally had the isParent question with relevant=TRUE. And performed 2 submissions (“test 1” and “test2”). I then updated and redeployed the form after changing isParent to relevant=FALSE

SimpleFormRelevant.xlsx (18.0 KB)

and then did another two submissions (“Test 3” and “Test 4”). Obviously, when I did these later 2 submissions the second question was not shown.

But, as you can see, in the final export the first two submissions remain unchanged.

Simple_Form_Relevant_-all_versions-False-_2025-09-18-21-45-14.xlsx|attachment (8.8 KB)

I’m not sure exactly what you are seeing here, but changing the form relevance should not affect any of the raw data that has already been submitted.

It will, however, ‘hide’ the now non-relevant question(s) should you attempt to subsequently manually edit the submission in Kobo - because Enketo will be using the latest version of the form to perform the edit. This will mean the field will become blanked out when you save the edit (!); eg

But simply updating the form to make a question non-relevant should in-of-itself not cause any existing data to become blanked out in an export, as I showed above.

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