monday.com Form Overwrite Column Values: Per-Field Protect/Overwrite Toggle

Forms Pain Point #4: Later form submission should overwrite earlier values on the same column. WorkForms has no concept of overwriting — it only creates new rows.

You send a client an intake form. They fill it out — project date: March 15. Two days later, they realize the date changed. They fill out the form again — project date: March 22. Now you have two items on your board. One says March 15. One says March 22. Which is correct? You have to manually check, compare, and delete the wrong one.

This isn’t user error. It’s a fundamental WorkForms limitation: forms can only create items, never update them. And even if you could update an existing item, monday.com provides zero control over which fields should overwrite and which should protect their first value.

For power users managing data integrity on complex boards — client projects, vendor rosters, event logistics — this is a data quality nightmare. This post covers why per-field overwrite control matters, how competitors handle it, and how to actually solve this problem.

Quick solution: BoardBridge — Form & Workflow Automation for monday.com — gives you per-field overwrite control. Protect the fields that should never change (like event date). Allow overwrites on the fields that need updates (like venue notes). Book a free demo.

The Data Integrity Problem

Here’s the scenario that breaks with WorkForms:

Client project workflow:

1. Deal closes → project item created on your Project Board
2. You send the client an intake form to gather project details
3. Client fills it out → WorkForms creates a new item with their answers
4. Now you have two items: the original project item (mostly empty) and the form-generated item (with all the data)
5. You manually merge the data or delete one item

Later:

1. Client realizes they got the venue address wrong
2. They fill out the form again
3. WorkForms creates a third item
4. Now you have three items for one project

This multiplies with every form resubmission. One client, five corrections, five duplicate items. At scale, this creates board pollution that makes dashboards, reports, and automations unreliable.

What you actually need: Forms that update the same item every time someone submits. With control over which columns get overwritten and which stay protected.

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What “Per-Field Overwrite Control” Means

Per-field overwrite control means you decide, field by field, whether later submissions can change a value that’s already been entered.

Example: Event Management

You’re managing an event. The intake form has 48 fields. Some should never change once set:

• Event date
• Event type (Show, Teebox, Show + Teebox)
• Contract signed (Yes/No)

Others should allow updates as planning evolves:

• Venue notes
• A/V requirements
• Travel arrangements
• Catering headcount

With per-field overwrite protection:

• Protected fields: First submission writes the value. All future submissions skip that field entirely — the original value is locked.
• Overwrite-allowed fields: Latest submission wins. Every form submission updates the field with the newest value.

You configure this once per form. The system enforces it automatically on every submission.

Why this matters for data integrity:

Without overwrite control, there are only two options:

1. Always overwrite everything — latest submission erases all previous data, even the correct values
2. Never overwrite anything — first submission locks everything, making updates impossible

Neither works for real workflows. You need granular, per-field control.

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How WorkForms Handles This (Spoiler: It Doesn’t)

Forms Pain Point #1, #7, #8, #12: WorkForms can only create new items. It cannot update existing ones at all.

Even monday.com’s new “Edit Form Responses” feature (Enterprise-only Source, released January 2025) doesn’t solve this:

✅ Lets users edit submissions they already made ❌ Only works on items the form itself created — not pre-existing items ❌ Caps at 10 edits per submission Source before the response locks permanently ❌ No per-field protection — it’s all-or-nothing editing

Community response:

“the core request here was to be able to edit/update ‘existing’ items… all that has been released is the ability to edit your own new submissions” — Dickson.Cody, February 15, 2026

Forms Pain Point #13: Even with Edit Responses, files can’t be deleted or replaced when editing — only new files can be added. monday.com’s file column API is append-only.

monday.com WorkForms fundamentally does not have an architecture for field-level overwrite control because it doesn’t update existing items in the first place.

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Competitor Comparison

Feature	monday.com WorkForms	SuperForm	Fillout	BoardBridge
Update existing items	❌	✅ Source	✅	✅
Per-field overwrite control	❌	❌	❌	✅
Unlimited edits	N/A	✅	✅	✅
Edit cap	N/A (creates items)	None	None	None

SuperForm Source: Supports updating existing items via unique URLs. However, no per-field overwrite control — updates all mapped fields on every submission.

Fillout (free up to 1,000 submissions/mo) Source: Supports updating existing items via their “Update monday.com items” integration. However, it updates all mapped fields on every submission — no per-field protection. If you pre-fill a form with existing data and the user leaves a field blank, Fillout will overwrite the original value with blank.

BoardBridge: Updates existing items via unique URLs. Every field has an Allow Overwrite toggle:

• Allow Overwrite = ON (default): Latest submission updates the field
• Allow Overwrite = OFF: First non-empty value is locked; future submissions skip this field

You can mix and match. Protect Event Date and Event Type. Allow overwrites on Venue Notes and Catering Count. Configure once, enforced on every submission.

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How BoardBridge’s Per-Field Overwrite Control Works

Step 1: Build Your Form

In the BoardBridge admin panel, create your form and add fields as usual:

• Text fields (short and long text)
• Email, phone, number
• Date fields
• Dropdown and status columns
• Checkboxes
• File uploads
• Location fields

Each field maps to a specific monday.com column via the column ID.

Step 2: Set the Overwrite Toggle Per Field

For every field in your form, you see an Allow Overwrite toggle:

Toggle ON (default):

• Every form submission writes the submitted value to this column
• If the column already has a value, it gets replaced with the new one
• Use this for fields that legitimately change (notes, preferences, counts, statuses that evolve)

Toggle OFF:

• The system checks: does this column already have a non-empty value?
• If yes → skip this field entirely on submission (don’t touch the existing value)
• If no → write the submitted value (first value wins, then field is locked)
• Use this for fields that should never change once set (dates, contract terms, client names, core identifiers)

Step 3: Test with Form Preview

Use the Form Preview feature to simulate submissions:

1. Submit the form with initial data → all fields write to the monday.com item
2. Simulate a second submission with different values
3. Verify: protected fields keep their original value, overwrite-allowed fields update

If the behavior doesn’t match your expectations, adjust the toggles and test again.

Step 4: Deploy and Monitor

Once live, every form submission follows the per-field rules automatically. The submission log shows exactly what happened:

• Field Event Date: protected, skipped (existing value: 2026-03-15)
• Field Venue Notes: overwrite allowed, updated (new value: “Stage setup confirmed”)
• Field Catering Count: overwrite allowed, updated (new value: 120)

Full transparency into what changed and what stayed protected.

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Real-World Example: Event Form with 48 Fields

A client runs 40–80 events per year. Their intake form has 48 fields covering logistics, A/V, travel, catering, and production.

Protected fields (10 total):

• Event Date
• Event Type
• Client Name
• Client Email
• Contract Signed
• Deposit Paid
• Event ID (auto-generated)
• Venue Name
• Show Format
• Billing Contact

Overwrite-allowed fields (38 total):

• Venue contact phone
• Venue access notes
• A/V requirements (stage, lighting, sound)
• Catering headcount
• Travel arrangements
• Accommodation notes
• Production notes
• Load-in time
• Setup requirements

What happens:

Initial submission (Day 1):

• All 48 fields write to the monday.com Event Overview item
• Event Date: March 15, Event Type: Show + Teebox, Client: Acme Corp
• Venue Notes: “Stage setup TBD”

Second submission (Day 5):

• Client updates venue notes and A/V requirements
• Protected fields: Skipped (Event Date, Event Type, Client Name all remain March 15, Show + Teebox, Acme Corp)
• Overwrite fields: Updated (Venue Notes: “Stage setup confirmed, load-in at 8 AM”, A/V: “Full band sound + wireless mics”)

Third submission (Day 12):

• Client updates catering headcount from 100 to 120
• Protected fields: Still locked (Event Date, Event Type untouched)
• Overwrite fields: Catering Count updates to 120

Result: One monday.com item, always up-to-date, with zero duplicates and zero manual merging. Core fields (date, type, client) never change. Evolving details (notes, counts, requirements) update as planning progresses.

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What Most Guides Don’t Tell You

The “Edit Form Responses” feature is not the same as updating existing items.

When monday.com announced “Edit Form Responses” in January 2025, users thought they finally got the ability to update pre-existing items. They didn’t.

“Edit Form Responses” lets the person who submitted a form go back and edit their own submission. It’s self-service editing for the submitter, not a way for forms to target existing board items.

And it’s crippled:

• Enterprise-only Source
• 10-edit cap per submission Source
• Can’t edit Signature or Connect Boards fields Source
• Files can only be added, not deleted or replaced

This is not a solution for “forms that update existing items.” It’s a band-aid for “let users fix their own typos.”

Per-field overwrite control is unique to BoardBridge.

No other monday.com form tool offers this. SuperForm, Fillout, JotForm, OnlyForm — none have per-field protection. It’s either all-or-nothing overwrite behavior or (in most cases) no update-existing-item functionality at all.

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