I was working with a client recently and tried to create a new form for a list within SharePoint Designer and received the unfriendly error:

“Could not save the list changes to the server.”

I had created list forms on this list before, so I began back tracking what has changed since I had created one on this list before.  One thing I did was change a set of Lookup columns within the list to point to new lists and removed the old lists where lookup columns used to point to.

When looking at the list columns I found the lookup column that didn’t have a list that it pointed to:

When you go into the column you will see again there is no corresponding list for the lookup:

I deleted the old column and REFRESHED SharePoint Designer.  If you just try to create the form without refreshing you will receive the same error.

Once I refreshed…Voila!

Hopefully if anyone else gets this error this post will be helpful!