Custom Layouts or Custom Fields Disappear

Thank you, Karthik!

I have seen this in a few circumstances including conflicts between the Base profile and Personal.  The Personal profile will take precedence over the Base profile.  There are multiple components in the profile that control the screen layout and only when one of those components exists in both the Base and Profile will there be a conflict.  I have not found it practical to limit the user's ability to modify their personal profile in all cases so I have had to reconcile the profile issue.  The best way I have found is to write a standard work instruction on how to do base profile edits.  Different people do it differently using techniques including importing, pushing from one profile to the other, directly editing (not common), and switching to the base profile to make changes.  This last approach works best.

I have also seen a strange manifestation when the app owner is not assigned a base profile, but this does not impact the users. It just creates a very strange looking screen when multiple profile changes occur from different people using the same account.  As such, people should use their own logins instead of app owner.

The process I follow is:

1. In Options on the User Profile Tab click on the Edit Base Profiles button.
2. Choose the Base profile to edit
3. Make the changes you wish
4. Change back to your personal profile in Options and save the base profile

If you wish to deploy those same changes to other profiles, you may export or push from the base profile you just edited instead of your personal profile.  This approach seems to work best.