If your responses seem to be gone, they are often still recoverable. This article explains why responses disappear, the exact order of recovery steps to try, and how to make sure this does not happen again.

Why responses disappear

There are two common causes:

1. The survey was deactivated — that is, you chose Deactivate survey rather than Stop / pause survey in the stop dialog. LimeSurvey does not delete the responses. It moves them to an archived table in the database. They are still there — they are just not attached to the active survey anymore.
2. The survey structure was changed between deactivation and reactivation. This is the dangerous case. If you edited, added, or removed questions while the survey was deactivated, answers for the changed or removed questions are silently dropped when the archived data is re-imported. Those answers may be unrecoverable.

Step-by-step recovery ladder

Try these steps in order. Stop as soon as one works.

1. Restore the archived responses in the UI. Click the green Activate button (top right), then work through the dialog:
   1. When it asks "What do you want to do with the existing Responses?", choose Keep existing responses to import the archived responses into your new response table.
   2. Pick the archived table from the "Import responses from an archived response table" dropdown (tables are listed like "Latest response table (1 responses)"), then click Continue.
   Important: do not change the survey structure before restoring — the product itself only promises that in-between edits "will be merged with your archived table as far as possible."
2. Ask LimeSurvey support to run the import for you. If the restore fails or the option is not available, contact support. Support will ask for your written consent to access your installation — replying "I agree" by email is sufficient. You never need to share your password.
3. Request a paid server-backup search (last resort). Support can browse server backups for your data. The backup recovery costs 120 Euro, and you are charged only if the recovery succeeds. If support cannot recover your data, you pay nothing.

What a backup restore can and cannot do

Be aware of two limits before you request a backup restore:

• Anything collected after the backup point is lost. A backup is a snapshot. Responses submitted after that snapshot was taken cannot be restored from it.
• Encrypted fields may become unreadable. If the survey was edited after the responses were collected, the encryption key may have changed. Some encrypted fields in the restored data can then no longer be decrypted.

How to avoid losing data

• Export your responses first. Before you deactivate a survey or change anything, export the responses so you always have your own copy.
• Choose "Stop / pause survey" instead of deactivating. If you want to stop collecting answers, click Deactivate — this does not deactivate right away; it first opens the dialog "Do you want to stop your survey?". Pick Stop / pause survey ("Stop your survey and still access your data for statistics"): it sets an expiry date and keeps your responses and participant info available for analysis. Only the second option, Deactivate survey, archives your responses.
• Never edit the survey structure between deactivation and reactivation if you care about the collected data. Answers dropped this way may be permanently unrecoverable.

If you are unsure at any point, stop and contact support before changing the survey. It is much easier to recover data that has not been touched.