InfoPath Dev

I have an InfoPath 2003 template used to submit forms to a SharePoint 2003 Forms Library.  If I remove a field from the InfoPath template, all existing fields remove the data.  I would like to be able to keep this data in the form for archiving purposes--is there a way to archive the template so existing forms use the archived template, but new forms would use an updated template?  Interesting enough, if the fields are promoted in SharePoint and shown in a view, the SharePoint holds onto the data (most likely because I have not deleted any resource files from the updated template).

Hey Jeff.

Typically you would just leave these "legacy fields" in your data source and just remove them from your views. Since if you remove them the old forms are then broken. Unless this is a large amounts of fields there is no real reason to eliminate these old fields from the datasource. No one would know unless they were in designer.

With SP 2007 content types I believe you can use a new template version going forward but otherwise you typically have to create a new library for the new forms.

Thank you Clay.  I figured it would be best to leave them in there, but mentioned to a customer that I would look into this.  Looking forward to the SP2007 and InfoPath!