What would you do if you have to re-create a form library that already contain more than 50 forms records?

Question

I have a situation as follows:

A Infopath form library was created in SharePoint 2007 and user have been submitting their infopath form into this library.

However, one day, there is a problem, a problem that resulting me to delete the Infopath form library and re-publish the infopath in order to create the form library.

By delete the Infopath form library, all the previous 50+ forms will be removed.

So, are there ways to keep these 50+ forms at the same time so that I can bring them into the the new Infopath form library?

Answer 1

1. Create a new InfoPath form library with the new name you want.
2. Open the old form library and there is an option -"Open in explorer view", which would open the form library in a folder structure.
3. Copy all the forms and do "Open in explorer view" for the new library too and paste them into it.
4. Now delete the old form library and that should be it.

Make sure that new submit requests from the user should be directed to the new form library by changing the data connections, before going to step 2.

Good Luck ...

Answer 2

In addition to using explorer view, as it was already answered.

This is basically the question on how to copy a form library with its content which is easily searchable.

In the same site collection, in Form Library Settings I would have used "Save Form Library as template" having checked "Include Content". This template choice will appear for creation of new form libraries.

For copying a form library to another site collection, it is also possible to save the created template as STP file.

You can find a few more methods like granular backup-restore, engagement of Sharepoint 2010 Management Shell (Export-SPWeb / Import-Spweb)m etc.

Update:
Note that moving Infopath XML data forms is unrelated to republishing an Infopath XSN form template or location of Infopath form template (here is about changing published location of a template).
If you copy the Infopath XML form data , they still will reference the same template.
If you deleted a library, you can restore it from Recycle Bin.

This is in Sharepoint 2010. Sorry, I never worked with 2007, have no idea (and access to see) how it is there and I missed that the question was about 2007.