Export to Import cycle destroys Form relationships. What is the recommended teqnique to maintain record IDs and relationships?

Export to Import cycle destroys Form relationships. What is the recommended teqnique to maintain record IDs and relationships?

When a record is deleted its key ID is also deleted from any related lookup fields. How can we export to excel a record set and reimport? The import will not overwrite existing or update existing records as far as I can tell. So I deleted the records so the import could succeed. Then I find ALL my related forms via a lookup field have been cleared :(

If the ID field is not honored on import what is the known work-around to keep the record keys intact on export/import?

What is the best practice to accomplish a excel import record UPDATE?

It would seem a simple solution would be to allow a disable of cascading deletes on lookup field IDs during a export / import by a admin, not a normal user feature. Or also, why not give the import form an option to allow records to be updated/overwritten by the imported record? Am I asking a 6year old question? lol

Thanks tt