How to downgrade Terraform State Version in Terraform Cloud/Enterprise 0.14.x - 1.0.x – HashiCorp Help Center

Introduction

There are some scenarios where it may be necessary to downgrade the version of the Terraform command line tool used by Terraform Cloud or Terraform Enterprise (TFC/E).

In workspaces that have already applied on a higher version of Terraform, the state will not allow using a lower version of Terraform. Manual steps must be taken in order to use a lower version of Terraform.

Expected Outcome

A remote state compatible with the desired Terraform version.

Prerequisites

Terraform version between 0.14.x and 1.0.x only.

Use Case

Reasons for downgrading the Terraform version include:

Provider version incompatibility with Terraform version
Inadvertently upgraded Terraform version

Procedure

Follow the steps at Using the remote backend and Terraform CLI to run plan and state operations locally. For step #7 in that guide, instead modify the Terraform Version setting to match the version you are downgrading to. At your local CLI, make sure that your Terraform version matches the desired downgraded version as well. All Terraform CLI releases can be found here.
In the target Workspace in TFC/E, navigate to the "States" tab, select the latest state record, and download the state file to the local directory containing your Terraform configuration.
Open the state file in a text editor and increment the `serial` value by 1, e.g. a `git diff` on the file might show:
```
 {
"version": 4,
  "terraform_version": "1.0.2",
- "serial": 3,
+ "serial": 4,
...
```
Run the terraform state push command with the -ignore_remote_version option targeting the just-modified state file to upload to the target Workspace. If the file name is sv-zzz.tfstate, this command would look like terraform state push -ignore_remote_version ./sv-zzz.tfstate.

Additional Information

This guide only covers through 1.0.x of Terraform because the cloud block introduced in Terraform 1.1.0 supersedes the behavior of the remote backend referenced in this guide, and because the V1 Compatibility Promise should allow downgrading from a later v1.x release to an earlier v1.x release, provided no newer language features are being used from the later release.