Archiving and deleting forms

Archive vs delete: the asymmetric truth

SALT’s archive and delete behaviors differ between Forms, Links, and Submissions. For Forms specifically:

	Archive a Form	Delete a Form
The Form’s Links	Effectively disabled (URLs return “form not available”)	Hard removed
Past Submissions	Preserved, still in your agency’s list	Preserved but detached from the Form
Restorable?	Yes — bring it back from the archived view	No
Recommended when	A Form is no longer relevant but you want history intact	Almost never

This is different from how Links and Submissions behave on delete — those have their own asymmetric semantics. See Archiving Links and Archiving vs deleting Submissions.

What archiving does

Archiving a Form:

• Disables consumer-facing URLs for all the Form’s Links. Visitors see “form not available.”
• Removes the Form from the active Forms list. It moves to an archived view.
• Keeps every Submission intact. They remain in your Submissions list, exportable, editable, and tied to the Form.
• Is fully reversible — restore brings everything back.

Reminders queued before archiving the Form still fire. Their recovery URLs resolve to “form not available.”

How to archive a Form

1. 1

   From the Forms list, open the Form you want to archive.

2. 2

   Use the archive action on the Form.

3. 3

   SALT moves the Form to the archived view. Its Links stop accepting new visitors immediately.

There’s no extra confirmation prompt beyond the action itself.

How to restore an archived Form

1. 1

   From the Forms list, switch to the archived filter to see inactive Forms.

2. 2

   Open the archived Form.

3. 3

   Use the restore action.

4. 4

   The Form returns to the active list. Its Links work again with their original URLs.

Restoring also restores any reminder schedules and confirmation settings that were active before archiving.

What deleting does

Deleting a Form:

• Permanently removes the Form along with its step structure, integration toggles, branding, and configuration.
• Detaches past Submissions from the Form (the Form reference becomes empty). Submissions remain in your Submissions list with their data, but no longer have a Form context to render against.
• Hard-removes the Form’s Links — those URLs don’t return “form not available” any more, they just don’t exist.

This is rarely the right choice. The detached Submissions can be confusing in the UI (no Form context, no original step layout, no original branding). Archive preserves a cleaner picture.

If you’re absolutely sure you want a Form gone:

1. 1

   Confirm you’ve exported or migrated any Submissions that need their Form context preserved (status, step layout, etc.).

2. 2

   From the Form’s detail view, use the delete action.

3. 3

   Confirm any prompts. The Form is gone immediately.

There’s no undo for delete. That’s why archive is the standard path.

When delete might still be the right call

Rare cases:

• A Form was created by mistake and never had a Submission. Deleting cleans up the noise.
• A Form is actively misleading customers and the cleanest fix is removal, not archive.
• You’re consolidating many test Forms into one canonical Form and want the test versions gone.

In each case, double-check the Submission count before deleting. If it’s nonzero, archive is almost always better.

Common questions

Will my Custom Questions disappear if I delete the Form? No. Custom Questions are independent of any Form they’re attached to. Deleting a Form removes the reference, not the Custom Question itself.

What about integrations — will deleting a Form break my AgencyZoom or EZLynx setup? Integration credentials are account-wide, not Form-scoped. Deleting one Form doesn’t affect integrations on other Forms.

A teammate archived our main Form — what now? Find the Form in the archived view and restore it. The original Link URLs immediately start working again.

Can I see how many Submissions a Form had before I delete it? Yes. The Form’s detail view shows submission counts. Filter your Submissions list by Form to see the actual records before deciding.