Reply To: Convert Field to Repeater without Loosing Existing Data

• John Huebner

• September 20, 2019 at 4:15 am

To answer the question by @squarestarmedia

No, this is not possible. When you are editing a field group ACF does not know what data in the database is saved using the field. In addition to this, when the group is saved, ACF does not know that the field use to be a top level field and is now nested in a repeater (or visa-versa). Nor does in know if you’ve changed to location rules of the group.

The data stored for a field is related to a post or some other object.

The field group is not related to anything. The fields in the group are related to the group.

In order to associate the field to the data when getting or saving a post (or other object) ACF needs 2 important pieces of information the first is the post ID and the second is the field key. ACF has the field key when saving a field group, but it does not have the post IDS for every post the a value is saved to.