This article covers activation in detail: what to check first, what happens when you activate, and how to stop and reactivate a survey safely. For the short version, see the overview article ("Overview: Activate your survey").

Before you activate

1. Make sure your survey has at least one question. With an empty survey the Activate button is greyed out; hovering it shows "You must have at least one question."
2. Preview the survey. Click the eye icon next to the green Activate button (top right) and walk through every page.
3. Finalize the structure. Activation freezes the questionnaire, so you can't add or delete questions afterward.
4. Check any start or expiry date you have set. In the editor these live in the Settings panel (left icon-rail gear) under Publication & access → Start date/time and End date/time.
5. Very large surveys can fail to activate because the response table cannot be created ("too many columns"). If that happens, remove questions, replace multiple-choice questions that only allow one choice with List (radio), or split the survey in two.

Activate the survey

1. Click the green Activate button at the top right of the editor. There is no confirmation dialog — the survey goes live immediately and a success panel appears, headed "Congratulations! Your survey has been activated."
2. The success panel shows response counters (Total, Full, Incomplete), a link to the results overview, the sharing block (access-mode dropdown, Copy link, QR code with Download QR code), and the buttons Edit survey, Deactivate, and Preview survey. (In the classic editor, activation instead asks about anonymized responses, IP address, timings, date stamp, and referrer URL — choices that cannot be changed later.)
3. You can revisit sharing options any time via the Share tab, and collected responses via the Results tab. While the survey is active, the green Activate button is replaced by a red Deactivate button.

Behind the scenes, LimeSurvey creates a dedicated response table where each completed response is stored; administrators can view or edit the data.

What activation locks

On an active survey, the purple + button for adding content is disabled — the survey structure is locked while the survey is running, so questions and question groups cannot be added or deleted, and a question's Type cannot be changed (it is greyed out). You can still edit an existing question's text: clicking it opens the rich-text toolbar as usual. The classic editor spells out the finer rules, and they apply in either editor:

• You can also edit the text of answers and the survey itself (for example, to fix typos), and change question attributes.
• You cannot change a question's answer type, or add answer options to array or multiple-choice questions; basic list questions do allow new answer options.
• The response-recording settings chosen at activation are fixed (classic editor).

Stopping a survey

Clicking the red Deactivate button (top right) opens the dialog "Do you want to stop your survey?" with two very different options:

Stop / pause survey (recommended). "Stop your survey and still access your data for statistics."

• Responses and participant information are kept and remain available for analysis.
• Participants can no longer access the survey; an expiry date is set.
• Modifications to the survey remain very limited.
• To reopen the survey, change or remove the expiry date.

Deactivate survey (hard stop). "Adjust questions or modify the survey structure."

• Responses and participant information are no longer available for analysis; responses move to an archived table.
• You can add, delete, and edit questions, groups, and settings again.
• Export your responses before deactivating.

After confirming deactivation, a toast confirms "Your survey has been deactivated", the top button becomes a green Activate again, the Results tab greys out, and the + button is enabled again.

The data-loss trap: if you deactivate and then change the survey structure, archived answers may not survive reimport. Compatibility is checked column by column — moved questions import correctly, removed questions are ignored, and new questions get default values. Never restructure before recovering data you still need.

Reactivation and recovering data

Closed a survey by accident? Do not change anything in the survey. Then:

1. Click the green Activate button (top right).
2. A dialog asks "What do you want to do with the existing Responses?" with two options:
   • Keep existing responses — "Import archived responses in your new response table" and start from where you left off. Note the product's own caveat: questions and edits made in the meantime "will be merged with your archived table as far as possible."
   • Start from scratch — keep the old responses archived and create a new response table.
3. To restore data, choose Keep existing responses, pick the source in the "Import responses from an archived response table" dropdown (e.g. "Latest response table (1 responses)"), and click Continue. (In the classic admin interface the equivalent is Import → Import answers from a deactivated survey table.)

Using the classic editor?

Click Activate this survey, set the five recording options in the dialog, then Save & activate survey and choose open or closed access. Stop a survey with Stop this survey, which offers Expire survey or Deactivate survey — the same trade-offs described above apply.