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August 14, 2026 · 7 min read

How to recover a deleted HubSpot form (2026 guide)

Deleted HubSpot forms aren’t actually gone. Step-by-step: pull the archived form definition from the Forms API and rebuild the form — plus the caveats nobody mentions.

Someone deleted a form. Maybe it was you, maybe a teammate, maybe an over-enthusiastic portal cleanup. The page it lived on now shows nothing, the workflow that enrolled its submitters is orphaned, and HubSpot’s UI offers no recycle bin for forms — unlike pages, emails or workflows, which can be restored from the UI, a deleted form simply disappears from the list.

Here’s the part HubSpot doesn’t surface anywhere: deleted forms are archived, not erased. The public Forms API will happily return the full definition of every form your portal has ever deleted. You can rebuild a deleted form from that data — by hand, following the steps below, or automatically.

Step 1 — get an API token with the forms scope

In your portal, go to Settings → Integrations → Private Apps and create a private app. Grant it the forms scope, then copy the access token. (Any admin can do this; no developer account needed.)

Step 2 — list archived forms

Call the Forms API with the archived flag:

curl "https://api.hubapi.com/marketing/v3/forms?archived=true&limit=100" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_PRIVATE_APP_TOKEN"

The response is a paginated list of archived (deleted) forms. Each entry is the complete definition — name, fieldGroups (every field with its type, options, required flag, placeholder), legalConsentOptions (your GDPR consent text), configuration and displayOptions. Find your form by name, or by scanning updatedAt for the right time period. In our experience forms deleted years ago are still returned.

Step 3 — rebuild the form

There is no un-archive endpoint — you re-create the form from the archived JSON. Take the definition, remove the read-only fields (id, createdAt, updatedAt, archived, archivedAt) and POST it back:

curl -X POST "https://api.hubapi.com/marketing/v3/forms/" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_PRIVATE_APP_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d @cleaned-definition.json

The caveats nobody mentions

• The rebuilt form gets a new GUID. Every embed code on your site still points at the old one — update them all, or the pages keep showing nothing.
• Workflows and lists need re-linking. Enrollment triggers that referenced the old form don’t transfer; re-select the new form in each workflow and active list.
• Submissions don’t come back. Contacts created by the old form are safe in the CRM, but the form-specific submission history stays attached to the deleted GUID.
• Follow-up emails and connected assets (e.g. simple follow-ups configured in the form) may need to be reconnected manually.