Alternative solution for deleting field and its submissoin.data

So this is basically saying that if I delete a field, that all of my old submissions from that field will be deleted?? That doesn't make sense, are there any workarounds for that?

Greetings,

Well you can do as advised in the warning message, to rename & hide that field in the form so you will keep as a passive field just to store the old data in the table.
How to hide a field.

The other option is to export all these data to external spreadsheet so you can get back to it after the field is deleted.
How to download submissions as Excel.

Please check which option suits you the best and let us know if you need further assistance..