Help! Accidentally deleted "Section" which then deleted all of my questions

  • 5 February 2021
  • 41 replies
  • 5479 views
U

After working on a new survey for 2+ hours, I realized that the template I’d been using had broken questions down into sections. I no longer needed this organization as all of my questions were now in one section together, so I clicked on the parent section and deleted it. It instantly deleted every question I’d been working on and now the survey is blank. Is there any way to pull up the history of changes so that I don’t have to start from scratch?! Seems like something that people might accidentally do often and hate that I can’t find any sort of option to undo.

john.desborough 2 years ago

+1 on this thread

 

Would love to be able to undo deleting!

@mary_lin - this comes from a user as well 

as someone who has done that on a couple of occasions already, i decided to take an ‘old school’ approach to trying to keep this from happening in the future, at least for me. 

In the old days before auto-save features and cloud replicated versions of files (excel and word docs were the usual culprits for me), you used to have to actually save your files and make backups - so that you could have the work saved and not lose things. I got lazy with all these newfangled products that did all this for me.. until i decided to change my first published form.. 

baammm

so now, I duplicate my forms and move the copy to a “Backups” workspace so that i a safety version of the file. Any time I am going to make a change to either question structure or logic and branching, I make a duplicate - even if i have yet to publish the form.. just to be sure. 

this won’t help me recover stuff i lose accidentally BUT if i can ingrain these habits in my approach to creating and managing my typeforms, i should lose a lot less. 

 

hope this offers some glimmer of a better practice until the recovery function might be avaialble.. 

des

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41 replies

T
Userlevel 1

Here is one more person who just paid for the very expensive subscription today, only to discover that you can’t undo delete… Is the dev team finally working on this feature yet?

Liz
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hi @Tracey_Sarah I asked our product team, and they said they do have it in the roadmap for this year. 😀 I don’t have a specific time as to when it would be released, but it’s at least in the plans!

Life is a series of awkward moments separated by snacks.
G

Hi! I accidentally deleted a slide and it removed all the data in the results. Is there a way that we can pull up those information?

Liz
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hi @gshappy I’ve added your post here where we have the answer. Additionally, this article here will explain more about editing a live form. 

Life is a series of awkward moments separated by snacks.
L

Just had this happen to me.

An alternative to an undo, which is a lot of dev work, could be a confirmation prompt.  “Are you sure you want to delete this section, as it’ll delete X# of questions along with it and ruin your day”.

Liz
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hi @LIV Lagger If you’re deleting a question that has collected results, this message already appears. Though, if you haven’t collected results and want to delete a question group, it would be expected behavior that the questions from the question group would also be deleted. I can share this feedback to the product team!

Life is a series of awkward moments separated by snacks.
john.desborough
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@LIV Lagger - at the risk of sounding pedantic, and i had this same thing happen to me a few times in the early days, I now make a backup copy of all files i put into production AND when i am going to make a change to a form, i always make a duplicate and start the changes in the duplicate so that i don’t run the risk of losing something that is running.. 

 

just my tuppence.. 

 

des

If your third coffee of the day is not helping you with your Typeform, maybe we can help you find your answers...
A

Hi there, what’s the latest on this feature? 

I feel like it’s table stakes for a survey creation tool, no? 

Thanks,

Alex 

Liz
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hi @ag15 Thanks for stopping by! This isn’t currently in our roadmap, but if that changes, we’ll post any updates here. 

Life is a series of awkward moments separated by snacks.
Keaton B

If you don’t want to add an undo button, at least add a confirmation popup that asks “Are you sure you want to delete everything?”. Or at least move the “clear everything” button somewhere else, or make it smaller. My boss just deleted all the complicated logic and has to restart as well.

john.desborough
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@Keaton B - having done that a number of times myself, one of hte best things to do is adopt an old school approach to make a copy of every file you publish and put into production. also, remind folks to make a copy of the original file (duplicate or push a copy to a ‘backups’ workspace… ) BEFORE they start making changes.. just in case.. 

 

too late now that the horse is out of the barn but, at the risk of sounding too pedantic, there are some simple common sense things we can do to avoid catastrophic losses like this. 

 

des

If your third coffee of the day is not helping you with your Typeform, maybe we can help you find your answers...
N

This went from “on the roadmap to be finished this year (2022)” to “Isn’t currently on our roadmap.” within 4 months. 

An undo button is an expected feature at this point. 

 

Liz
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hi @Nick P Thanks for stopping by! I’m not sure I understand. Are you looking to request an undo button?

Life is a series of awkward moments separated by snacks.
S

Having a course correction for users is UX 101, I just lost all my questions after working on them for OVER an hour and I’m not clear on how it happened because I didn’t select delete. Designing a recover function or restore or heck “undo” is UX 101! Do better TYPEFORM! 

Liz
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

HI @sellis thinkshout the builder should be saving any of the work you’ve created as you build the form, though those changes won’t go live until you click the publish button. Do you mind sharing what browser and device you’re using to build the form? 

Life is a series of awkward moments separated by snacks.
C

Yeah, no restore/undo and no warning that deleting is permanent is a deal breaker. I just created my first TypeForm and accidentally deleted it. I was ready to upgrade to a paid account, but nope, I’m finding another survey tool that has better UX.

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