InfoPath Dev

Hi all, apologies if this has been covered already but I couldn't find it.  I need to make changes to an exisiting InfoPath 2010 template.xsn which I have done successfully, however I have not replaced the existing template with the new template as I am unsure if exisitng forms will still be accessible after publishing the updated form template?

The Microsoft message appears "This action can cause data loss in existing forms that are based on this form template.  In particular, any forms that have already been filled out will lose the data that is stored in its field or group.  Do you want to continue?"

The Microsoft/InfoPath support page says if you click Yes and continue with your changes, it may not be possible to access the data in existing forms after you publish the updated form template. In some scenarios, this may be acceptable. You will have to decide what works for your situation.

Not very helpful??  Has anyone done this before without taking a 50/50 gamble?

The thing to keep in mind is that you should not move around your schema fields (reorder them) nor remove (delete) nodes in the schema. Doing so would cause the existing XMLs to no longer be compatible with the XSN.

When you do publish an updated XSN, best practice is to keep a backup of the XSN, for example MyForm_Aug282012.xsn and MyForm_Aug292012.xsn. When you publish the new XSN, test it; if something is not right, you can immediately republish the older version (the one you know works).

Hope this helps!

 I can imagine that existing XML data forms would loose the data if you open them with a new incompatible form and save/submit them but I cannot understand how the data is going to be lost just due to publishing a template.

Then it is usually impossible to open old forms with incompatible template as well as old XML data forms should be still opened with old template with which they were created though this might fail.

The support page mentioning such warning is probably:

•  Help prevent data loss in existing user forms

 and its previous section Considerations for updating browser-enabled form templates explains the possible scenario of such data loss: 

•  "If you publish updates to a form template that you have deployed yourself to a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 library or list, users who happen to be in the middle of filling out a form that is based on that form template will see an error message when they attempt to save or submit their form. For this reason, you may want to alert users of impending updates and possibly take the form template offline during off-peak hours to perform the updates"

I made the mistake of updating and publishing my InfoPath form when I made changes that I should not have.  Thus, I lost some information on the submitted forms.  How can you republish the older version?

Thanks!