Publish and manage versions

Publishing

The Publish button in the top bar is your only route from draft to live. Its label changes with the state of the form:

Selecting it opens a dialog. For a form that is already live, the dialog lists what will change under What will change, for example "Added "Phone number"", "Changed "Team size" (choices, required)" or "Design changed". The Version note field is optional and holds up to 200 characters. It is worth using when several people edit the same form.

When you confirm, Formwork checks the draft and either publishes or tells you what to fix.

What is checked

A form cannot be published when:

• a question has no title;
• a choice question has no options and no "Other" option;
• a grid has no rows or no columns;
• the form has no questions;
• a page in a multi-page form is empty.

The dialog shows these under Fix these first. It also warns you beforehand, with the first problem, when it already knows the draft has some.

The second check is your plan. If the draft uses something your plan does not include, such as a logic rule, a quiz, a question type or a theme setting, publishing is refused and an upgrade prompt names the feature. On a first publish, the number of live forms is also checked against your plan's limit. See When you reach a limit.

After publishing

The dialog changes to "Published" and says which version is live. It offers the public link with a Copy button, Open form and Share options. From then on:

• new visitors see the new version;
• earlier responses stay tied to the version they answered;
• someone who started a response before you published continues on their version.

Publishing a draft identical to the live version does nothing and says "Already up to date".

Version history

Select the clock icon in the builder toolbar. Every publish is listed, newest first, with its version number, a Live badge on the current one, the time in UTC, who published it, how many responses it has and the note. The list shows the latest 100 versions.

Restore to draft loads a version into the draft. It is a copy: nothing goes live until you publish, and the old version stays in the history. Use it to undo a bad edit, or to bring back a question you removed.

In Responses, the Form version filter lets you look at answers to one version only. It appears once a form has more than one version.

Taking a form offline

There is no "unpublish". Instead there are three ways to stop a form, with different effects.

Closing is instant and needs no publish. See Opening, closing and limits.

Editing in place

The API can change a form's title and open or close it, but not its questions. Publishing always happens in the builder. See Forms and responses endpoints.