About formatting text

You can format every text you write in the editorial area: question texts, help descriptions, and the texts of the welcome screen and the end screen. Click the text and a toolbar appears above it.

The toolbar

1. The toolbar: alignment, B for bold, I for italic, U for underline, the link button, and ⋮ for more.

2. ⋮ > Font size: Small, Medium or Large for the selected text.

3. ⋮ > Actions: Edit as HTML opens the text as HTML. Placeholder fields inserts participant data, survey data and earlier answers. See Piping: use answers from previous questions.

Good habits

• Paste as plain text with Cmd+Shift+V (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+V (Windows). Text copied from Word or a web page brings its own fonts and colors, which then fight with your theme.
• Keep formatting light. Set colors and fonts once for the whole survey in the theme options, not question by question. See Theme options and presentation settings.
• Keep the question short. Put instructions and examples into the help description. The question text also appears in exports and statistics.

Edit as HTML

Use ⋮ > Edit as HTML for what the toolbar cannot do, such as a table or an image. Close every tag you open: an unclosed tag can break the rest of the page. Give every image an alt text, so that screen readers can describe it. See Create accessible surveys.

Note: LimeSurvey removes HTML it considers unsafe, such as scripts, when it saves the text.

Next steps

• Reuse questions and groups
• Create accessible surveys
• Theme options and presentation settings

FAQ

How do I change the color of a question text?

Set colors for the whole survey in the theme options under Presentation. For a single text, use Edit as HTML, but keep in mind that such colors do not change with the theme.

Where is the Save button?

There is none. The editor saves as you type. Saved at in the top bar shows the time of the last save.