Scenarios Where Editing a Content Type Is Unsafe

Editing a content type or the properties of any field of the content type may result in data loss or may invalidate Field visibility rules, if you have set any.

Let’s look at the properties that are not safe to edit while editing a content type. 

When data is lost 

While you edit a content type, you might end up losing data if you do the following:

• Edit properties of a field: If you change the UID of an existing field or change its datatype or mark the field as Multiple, the data of that field in all existing entries will be lost.
• Delete a field: If you delete an existing field from an existing content type, the data of that field will be lost in all the existing entries.

When Field visibility rules are invalidated

If you have added certain Field visibility rules to your content type, and subsequently, you make changes to the properties of the fields (used in the rule), the rule may become invalid in the following cases:

• The UID of the operand or the target field is changed
• The operand or the target field is deleted or removed
• The operand field is marked as multiple
• The operand or the target field is moved to a group or a modular block
• The data type of the operand field is changed to a data type that is not supported by Field visibility rules
• Validations added to the field set as the target field. If you set the following validations by editing the properties of the field, the field visibility rule will be invalidated:
  • Add a date range (start and end date) 
  • Add min and max instances (in case of any multiple-type field)
  • Add limit for Multiple Choices (in case of Select field)
  • Any field marked as “Mandatory”  
  • Add min and max character length for any text field
  • Add a min and max range for the number field
  • Add any validation through Regular Expression (for example, starts with)
  • Dimensions (image dimensions, etc) and extensions (.jpeg, png, etc) applied