Retention and deleting responses

How long things are kept

Formwork runs a cleanup once a day. These are the rules it applies.

You can be stricter than the default. Delete partials older than 7 days on the Table view removes unfinished responses sooner, and you can delete any response at any time.

Deleting a response

Editors and owners can delete responses. There are four ways:

• Delete on a single response in the Individual view.
• Tick rows in the Table view and choose Delete, up to 500 at a time.
• Delete partials older than 7 days for unfinished ones.
• DELETE /api/v1/forms/{id}/responses/{response_id} with a write key. See Forms and responses endpoints.

Deleting removes the answers, uploaded files and signatures, and the anonymous events recorded for that response, and lowers the form's response count. It cannot be undone.

Handling a request from a respondent

Formwork gives you the tools. What you owe respondents, and how quickly, depends on your situation. A typical sequence is:

1. Find the response. In Responses, use Search answers to look for their email address or a distinctive answer. The search covers answers, collected email addresses, notes and tags. Add filter narrows by one question.
2. Give them a copy, if they ask. Filter to their response and export it. CSV is available on every plan; JSON needs a plan with all export formats. The Print view of one response is another option.
3. Delete it, if they ask. Use Delete on the response.

Forms that collect no email and no name may not let you tell whose response is whose. In that case, respondents can only point out their answer.

What deletion does not reach

Deleting a response removes it from Formwork. It cannot recall copies that already left:

• notification emails and receipts that were sent;
• webhook payloads your own systems received and stored;
• exports and downloads made earlier, including the file links sent by email, which expire after 7 days;
• data pulled through the API.

Keep this in mind when you decide who gets notifications and which endpoints receive webhooks, and delete from those places as well when a request requires it.

Deleting a whole form or workspace

• Move to trash takes a form offline. Delete forever, in the trash, removes the form with its responses and files immediately. Otherwise it happens by itself after 30 days.
• Delete this workspace, for owners, removes every form in it with its responses and uploaded files.
• Deleting your account removes the workspaces where you are the only member, in the same way. See Download or delete your account data.

Files

Uploaded files leave the disk when their response is deleted, when their form is deleted for good, or when a draft they belong to expires. Images you added in the builder, such as a cover or logo, are deleted together with the form.

Retention on your side

Formwork does not delete finished responses by itself. If your policy sets a limit on how long survey data may be kept, schedule a reminder to export and clear a form, or use the API from a script to remove responses older than a date. The since parameter helps to find what is new, not what is old, so read the submitted_at field of each response to pick the ones to delete.