Survey settings apply to one survey only — its languages, page layout, access rules, and notifications. They are separate from your global account settings, which apply to your whole LimeSurvey installation and provide the defaults every new survey starts from.

Open the settings

In the survey editor, click the gear icon (Settings) in the icon rail on the left. The settings for the survey you are editing open; the same rail takes you back to Structure (the canvas) at any time. Like everything in the editor, changes are saved automatically — there is no save button.

General settings

The General section holds the survey's basic identity and behaviour. The two settings you will touch most:

• Survey languages — a multi-select of every language this survey runs in, alongside a separate Base language field marking the original. Add a language here and a language switcher appears at the top of the canvas for editing each language's content. The Translations tool in the icon rail (a classic screen that needs a manual save) then becomes active.
• Format — how the survey is paginated: Group by group (one page per question group — the default), Question by question (one page per question), or All in one (the entire survey on a single page).

What else lives here

Welcome and end messages are edited directly on the canvas, not in settings. Besides General, the Settings panel has four more sections — in order, each with a dedicated article:

• Privacy policy — the data policy text and consent checkbox shown to respondents.
• Participant settings — how respondents are handled: anonymized responses, cookies, access codes.
• Publication & access — start and end dates, public listing, and who may access the survey.
• Notifications & data — admin notification emails and which response data is stored.

On-screen behaviour while the survey runs — navigation, progress bar, question numbering — and this survey's visual design (colors, fonts, backgrounds) both live under the separate Presentation icon in the rail, not in the Settings panel. The visual design controls are its Theme options sub-tab, which covers per-survey look-and-feel only.

Editing a theme's own CSS or Twig is a separate classic-admin job in the Theme editor (Configuration → Advanced → Themes), where standard themes are read-only until you Extend one.

Inheritance in one paragraph

Many survey settings start out inheriting a default set at the global (installation or account) level — for example the default base language, the list of languages available to add, and the bounce email address. Setting a value in the survey's own settings overrides that default for that survey. (Per-setting inheritance choices are not yet exposed in the new editor.)

Using the classic editor?

In the classic admin interface, open your survey and use the Settings tab of the left-hand menu. It has two parts. Survey settings covers what this article describes, plus a few areas the new editor keeps outside the Settings panel: Overview, General settings, Text elements, Data policy settings, Theme options, Presentation, Participant settings, Notifications & data, and Publication & access. Below it, the Survey menu covers structure and administration: question and group lists, reordering, survey participants, quotas, assessments, survey permissions, email templates, panel integration, resources, and plugins. The same inheritance rule applies — survey values override the global defaults set under Configuration → Global settings.