Legacy text fields and the storage upgrade

Fields created with an earlier version of the app save every answer as text, including yes/no, number, date and choices answers. A text field whose type you later changed to number, date or yes/no is saved as text too. They keep working: customers and staff can still see and change them. But Shopify treats their answers as text, so segments and Flow conditions can't compare them as dates or numbers. A storage upgrade moves these fields to the proper types.

How to tell a field is legacy

Open the field group in Customer Profiles. A legacy field shows the note "Answers to this field are saved as text, as Customer Fields saved them" under its type. Only yes/no, number, date, birthday, anniversary and choices fields can be affected; text, phone number and dropdown answers are text anyway. New fields always use the proper type.

What legacy storage means

• Segments and Flow see the answer as text, so a date can't be used in a "before" or "after" condition, and a number can't be compared
• Yes/no fields save only "yes". An unticked box is the same as no answer, so the completion reminder leaves these fields out of its count.
• The field's type can be switched between single-answer types, but not to Choices (several)

The storage upgrade

Contact our support team to upgrade your legacy fields. We run the upgrade for you:

1. A check first. We read your answers without changing anything and tell you, per field, how many answers convert and which, if any, don't (for example a date that was typed as "next spring").
2. The upgrade, at a quiet hour. With your go-ahead, we copy every convertible answer to the new format, at a time when your store is quiet. Please ask your staff not to edit customer answers in the admin during the upgrade.
3. Your old answers are kept. The original text answers stay on your customers in Shopify as a backup, so the upgrade can be reversed field by field.

After the upgrade

Each upgraded field gets a new metafield key: field_12 becomes field_12_t. If you refer to a field's key in an email template, a theme, a segment or a Shopify Flow workflow, update it to the new key.

Upgrade before you turn on the reminder

If you plan to use the profile completion reminder, upgrade your legacy yes/no fields first. Once upgraded, "no" counts as an answer, and customers who answered every field stop seeing the reminder.