Is it safe to edit a survey that has already collected responses?
In general, it is not recommended that you make changes to a survey that has already collected responses because of the risk of data loss or corruption.
However, we recognize that problems may arise and that you should make changes after you have collected responses.
The most important rule to remember when making changes to a survey is that any changes you make will affect the responses you have previously collected.
It is highly recommended that you make a backup of the data by exporting it in Excel or CSV format before making any changes to the survey.
Impacts of actions on a survey that has collected responses
| Action | Impact | Recommendation | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edit survey title | ⚠️ Medium | Caution | |
| Edit survey internal name | ✅ Safe | Caution | This method is safe, since the internal name only affects the Lime interface and not the respondents. |
| Edit the title of a question | ⚠️ Medium | Caution | This method is only safe if you are correcting typos or making minor changes. Changing the meaning of the question is not recommended. When viewing responses or a report, all responses before and after the change are displayed with the new question text. |
| Edit an answer choice | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | All responses already collected as well as future responses will be changed to the new value. This method is only safe if you correct typos or make minor changes, as all previous responses will reflect the changes. To maintain the integrity of historical data, it is recommended that you hide the answer choice and create a new one. |
| Edit a scale question | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | This method is only safe if you correct typos or edit labels. To maintain the integrity of historical data, it is recommended that you hide the answer choice and create a new one. |
| Hide an answer choice | ✅ Safe | Caution | Hiding an answer choice allows you to hide the choice from respondents, while retaining the data. You can go back and make the choice visible to respondents again at any time. Hidden choices appear in reports and graphs. If the hidden choice is present in conditional branches, it will be retained but ignored. |
| Delete an answer choice | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | All responses collected for this choice will also be deleted. This action is irreversible. If the choice is present in conditional branches, those branches will also be deleted. To maintain the integrity of historical data, it is recommended that you hide the answer choice. |
| Reorder answer choices | ✅ Safe | Caution | Generally no impact. To safely change the order of response choices, use the "drag and drop" icon to drag existing choices to new positions. NEVER copy and paste or overwrite existing text with new text to change the order - this may corrupt the responses collected. |
| Reorder questions | ✅ Safe | Caution | When viewing responses or a report, all questions before and after the change will be displayed in the new order without affecting the collected responses. If questions are contained in conditional logic, changes in position can impact the logic by creating loops. |
| Delete a question | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | All answers collected for this question will also be deleted. This action is irreversible. If the question is present in conditional branches of another question, the branches will also be deleted. |
| Delete a survey | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | All answers collected for the survey will also be deleted. This action is irreversible. We recommend archiving the survey rather than deleting it. |
| Remove a section | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | If there is conditional logic on this section, it will also be deleted. All the questions in this section will be preserved. |
| Add a question in a section | ✅ Safe | Caution | When viewing responses or a report, the question will be displayed in the section without affecting the collected responses. If the question is contained in conditional logic, changes in position can impact the logic by creating loops. |
| Move a question in another section | ✅ Safe | Caution | When viewing responses or a report, the question will be displayed in the new section without affecting the collected responses. If the question is contained in conditional logic, changes in position can impact the logic by creating loops. |
| Remove a question from a section | ✅ Safe | Caution | When viewing responses or a report, the question will be displayed out of the section without affecting the collected responses. If the question is contained in conditional logic, changes in position can impact the logic by creating loops. |
| Edit a translation | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | All responses already collected as well as future responses will be changed to the new value. This method is only safe if you correct typos or make minor changes, as all previous responses will reflect the changes. |
| Edit the collaborators of a survey | ✅ Safe | Caution | Allows you to modify the rights (read/write) on the survey. Generally without impact, but may affect the rights of users who previously had access to the survey. |
| Edit anonymization options | ✅ Safe | Caution | Responses are always available, anonymized or not, depending on the configuration and user permissions. This action is reversible. |
| Edit text analysis options | ✅ Safe | Caution | Responses are always available, depending on the configuration and permissions of the users. This action is reversible. |
| Edit an answer’s score | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | The change will only apply to new completions. Answers collected before this change will keep the previous score. |
| Edit a score formula | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | This change will only apply to new completions. Completions collected before this change will still be calculated based on the old formula. |
| Edit a severity treshold | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | The change will only apply to new completions. Previous completions will keep the previous treshold. |
| Delete a severity treshold | ⛔️ Risky | Avoid | The treshold will be deleted for all completions. This action is irreversible. |