Hello @dav00,
I hope you’re doing great today!
Indeed, removing a field removes it from submissions as well. However, the field data should still be in the database (in postmeta table).
As a workaround, you can re-create the field with the same field ID (for example, text-1, text-2, etc.) as before.
The field ID is visible when you customize the field:
https://prnt.sc/F5Lk7sqmSlhq
After the field is back with the same field ID, you should be able to see it in submissions again, with the previously submitted data.
Next, you can hide it on the frontend, for example:
– hide it via CSS:
https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_display_hide.asp
– or hide it by adding a couple of visibility conditions in the field settings.
For instance, you can add a condition to hide it if some other field in the form contains a specific character, along with a second condition to hide it if that other field doesn’t contain the same character: https://prnt.sc/7OCOHvZnojTu
This way the field value will always match one of the two conditions, and the field should remain hidden.
I hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any questions.
Best Regards,
Dmytro
