Is there a way to prevent a form submission from overwriting exisiting contact field values when the lead that submits the form already exisits in our instance?
Ex: Our “Lead Source Detail” field changes each time the same contact downloads an assest.
Suggested solution: Have a hidden toggle field for each field form option (similar to the “Make this field hidden”) that says “Do not overwrite exisiting value”.
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Hi @AMendez1,
There currently aren’t any options to prevent this. It’s expected behavior that new form submissions overwrite existing values. Other users have already asked for a feature to lock values and prevent them from being overwritten: Lock fields from overwriting new data
(I’m not following how a hidden field would help with this issue.)
At the moment, the only native workaround that I’m aware of requires workflows (available in the Professional subscriptions). You could create a copy of the property used in the form and then copy the value from the form field into this new property once. Without re-enrollment enabled in the workflow, this would only happen once and the new property would always keep the first value. Without workflows, this is currently not possible. Let me know if you need assistance to set this up.
Best regards!
Similar issue here. We often email contacts and include forms within those messages. consequently, and by design, those emails get forwarded to other/new people that we also want to capture. We collect the person’s email address on the form obviously, but yet the form submission is not appending the HubSpot record associated with the email entered on the form submission. Instead, it is using the matching cookie from that first email we sent.
@karstenkoehler Your comment is super helpful. A quick followup question. The issue we are facing is exact opposite. Currently if a previous form is filled with a value for few fields Ex: Different Equipment counts, The next time they fill in the form again. Even it the field is not selected ie left blank. It takes the values from the previous form and is throwing our numbers off…
Any ideas for me to ensure all old values are overwritten irrespective of a new value is populated or not?
I really appreciate your inputs.
Thanks in advance.
Similar issue: We do a contest every year where teachers upload files for their students entries. We found that some teachers are completing the form multiple times with new file(s) – either from lack of understanding they can be uploaded all at once (although explained), they missed one, they’re uploading as the entries become available over time, or whatever other scenario. Thankfully, I got notifications for each submission, but going through all the email notifications to see which ones are multiple entries, and then copy and pasting the URL for each entry link into the submissions spreadsheet we’re exporting is very time consuming – we’re talking hundreds of entries before the re-submissions. Being able to somehow select to append the upload files property in the form tool instead of how it automatically overwriting would be awesome!!! As it stands, we’re looking for another way to collect these files outside of HubSpot, if necessary.
I’d treat this as a source-of-truth problem rather than only a form problem.
The first question is: should this field ever be overwritten after the first value is set?
For fields like lead source, lifecycle stage, owner, qualification status or anything used in reporting, I’d usually separate the logic into:
That way the form can still capture new information without destroying the field your reports or routing depend on.
Before changing the form, I’d also check:
A form overwrite can look small, but if the field drives segmentation, attribution, routing or lifecycle reporting, it can create a lot of cleanup later.