Drafts, versions and live settings

Two copies of every form

Each form has a draft and, once you have published, a live version. The builder edits the draft only. Respondents only ever see the live version. That split is why you can rewrite a form that is collecting answers without anyone seeing half-finished work.

The draft saves automatically. The top bar shows one of these states: Saved, Saving…, Unsaved changes, Could not save. Retrying… or Edited elsewhere. If you close the tab with unsaved work, the browser warns you first.

What publishing does

Publishing takes a snapshot of the draft and stores it as a new version: 1, 2, 3 and so on. A version is never edited afterwards.

Every response remembers which version it was answered against. Answers are checked against that version and displayed with that version's questions. If you later delete a question, rename an option or change a rule, the older responses still make sense, because they still point at the definition they were given. Question ids stay the same across versions, so results for a question that survived an edit are combined.

Someone who started filling in the form before you published continues on the version they started. They are not pushed onto the new one halfway through.

Before you publish, the dialog lists what will change ("Added", "Removed", "Changed" per question, plus notes such as "Page routing changed" or "Design changed"). Publishing an unchanged draft says "Already up to date" and creates nothing.

Editing a live form

Once a form is live, the badge in the top bar reads Unpublished changes whenever the draft differs from the live version, and the button reads Publish changes. Nothing you do in the meantime reaches respondents.

Two actions live in Version history (the clock icon in the builder toolbar):

• Restore to draft loads an old version into the draft. It does not go live until you publish it.
• Discard unpublished changes throws the draft away and goes back to what is live. It asks for confirmation.

Settings that apply immediately

Some settings are not part of the version. They are stored on the form itself and apply on the next request, with no publish. You change them on the Settings and Share tabs.

Closing a form is a good example of why this matters: if a link is spreading and you need to stop it, you switch Accepting responses off and it stops on the next page load, without touching the content.

Two people editing at once

Every save carries a revision number. If someone else saved a newer draft while you were typing, you see Edited somewhere else with two choices: Load their version or Keep mine and overwrite. People who have the form open show up as small avatars in the builder toolbar.

For the full publishing workflow, continue with Publish and manage versions.