About archived responses

When you end a survey with Deactivate survey, LimeSurvey does not delete the responses. It archives them as a response set, together with the participant list. Every deactivation adds a set, and all sets stay available. Results shows no responses until you load a set again. As long as you do not change the questions, you get all responses of the set back when you reactivate the survey.

To end a survey and keep its responses available, use Stop / pause survey instead. See Stop, pause or deactivate a survey.

Get archived responses back

1. In the editor, click Reactivate at the top right. The dialog What do you want to do with the existing Responses? opens.

2. Choose Keep existing responses (1).

3. Under Import responses from an archived response table (3), select the response set: Latest response table, or an older set, listed with the date it was archived and its number of responses.

4. Click Continue (4).

The survey is active again, with the archived responses in Results.

Note: If you changed questions after deactivating, LimeSurvey merges the response set into the changed survey as far as possible. Answers to questions you changed or removed can be lost.

If the import does not work

1. Contact LimeSurvey support. Support can run the import for you. Support asks for your written consent to access your installation: a reply "I agree" to the support email is enough. You never share your password.

2. As a last resort, support can search the server backups for your data. A backup recovery costs 120 Euro and is only charged if it succeeds.

A backup has two limits. Responses collected after the backup was made are not in it. And if the survey was changed after the responses were collected, some encrypted answers can become unreadable.

Avoid losing responses

• Export your responses before you deactivate or change a survey. See Export your responses.
• To end a survey, use Stop / pause survey. Your responses stay in Results.
• Older response sets are not lost. Each deactivation archives a set, and when you reactivate you can load any of them, also an older one.
• Load the archived responses before you change questions. Answers to changed or removed questions may not come back.

Next steps

• Stop, pause or deactivate a survey
• Export your responses
• Activate your survey

FAQ

Is my participant list archived too?

Yes. To get it back, open Participant lists on the Share page. Under Restore options, select the archived list and click Restore.

I chose Start from scratch when I reactivated. Are the old responses lost?

No. Start from scratch leaves the old responses in the archive and starts with an empty response table. Contact support to import them.

I deleted a question, group or survey. Can I get it back?

Not in LimeSurvey: deleting can't be undone. As a last resort, support can search the server backups, as described above. See Get support.