I am working in an existing project and was going to remove an observation field, then replace it with a new one. I haven’t done this in the past, so I was concerned about losing data.
I set up a test project and made 9 observations with the original field ‘building name or address’ to get a base set of test observations. Here is a shot of the exported data for those observations and the others in the project.
I then removed field ‘building name or address’ and added new field ‘building name or address, downtown stl’. All other fields were left the same. After that, I made another 9 observations with the new field and exported the data once again. Here is a shot of the export:
The new obs field is working, but in the processing of removing the original observation field it looks like I have also lost all of the historic data for that field. I searched the rest of the spreadsheet to see if it might have moved the data to another column, but it did not.
Is there a way to remove (or hide?) an old observation field you no longer want, without losing all of the data you have collected for the field in the past? I could make the original field ‘building name or address’ no longer required, that could cause some confusion for users.
that said, it’s worth clarifying that the observation field data is not lost. the export is just returning data from a different observation field and not the original observation field.
i haven’t checked, but i assume when you export from the project page, you get a default set of fields returned in the export. before you actually generate the export, you should have an opportunity to select the exact fields you want to return in your CSV, or if you go from the Explore page, you should also be able to specify your own set of fields that you want to be returned in your export. so you should be able to select your old observation field, your new observation field, or both, to be returned.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that is the case.
I looked through the field choices before exporting and was unable to locate that data. Under the Observation Fields section specfically, it no longer shows original field ‘building name or address’.
