If you can design your interaction so that you only use one view, then JSF will preserve your unvalidated/unconverted form data. I believe it only discards the data when you write to another view. If you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Where is it supposed to store that unconverted/unvalidated string data? Unless your model only uses raw string values, there's no place for the data there. If you also discard your view, that data is lost. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4006560#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...