Editing a form that’s already live and collecting responses

When editing or changing questions on a form that’s already live (collecting responses), here are a few guidelines we recommend you follow.

How to edit a live form safely

By default, you'll have to hit the Publish button to make changes in your form public/live. This means that people won't see that you're making live edits while creating your form.

Note: You can test your forms without making any published changes by using the Live Preview panel in the Create panel. This allows you to see how your changes might look, without affecting any current results.

Once your form is live and collecting responses, though, publishing new edits might affect the results you've already collected.

You can do any of the following while the form is live, without affecting the results you've collected:

- Change the visual design or theme

- Correct a typo (as long as you are only editing text, and not deleting any questions or answer choices)

- Add or remove images or video (as long as you are editing the question's Layout, and not changing the question type to Picture Choice)

- Hide a question field with Branching and calculations (simply add Logic to the previous question and set “Always jump to <add the Question that follows the one you’d like to hide here>”.)

You can also edit live forms in the following ways, which may affect the results you've already collected: 

- Toggle the Multiple Selection button

- Delete a question or question choice, or change a question's type

- Add or reorder question choices

The rest of the article covers what will happen if you make any of the previous three changes to a live form, and what you can do to avoid losing responses if one of these changes is necessary. 

Toggle the Multiple selection button

You can toggle the Multiple selection button on Picture Choice or Multiple Choice questions even after you’ve started collecting results. However, if you do so you will see a warning, as this will permanently delete results collected on that question!

If you want to use this toggle without losing results, you have two options: export those results before they are lost, or duplicate your form and make changes to the duplicated form.

When creating a copy of your form, only the structure will be duplicated, not the results. You'll keep the results collected so far in the original form, and can edit and re-share the duplicated version to get more results.

Note: You can add extra choices to your Multiple/Picture Choice question without losing any results. You will only lose results if you remove a choice from your question.

Delete a question or question choice, or change question type

You can delete a question or an answer choice that has already collected responses, but you'll see the following warning message:

When you click to delete a question that has already collected responses or is used in the logical structure of your form, you'll see this warning message:

When you click to delete a question used to recall information in an upcoming question, you'll see this warning message:

When you click to delete a question that has already collected responses or is used in follow-ups, you'll see this warning message:

You can also change the question type of a question that has already collected responses, but you'll see the following warning message:

If you want to delete a question or an answer choice, or change a question's type, without losing results, you can export those results before they are lost, or duplicate your form and make changes to the new version.

Add or reorder question choices

If you add or reorder question choices, you won't lose any of the responses you have already collected. However, your results data may be misleading, because it will show question data together from both before and after the change.

You'll see the following warning message if you add or reorder question choices:

If you want to prevent any unintended effects on your results data from this change, you can export form results before publishing the change so that you have an accurate copy. You can also duplicate your form and add the changes to the new version. 

Export results to prevent losing data

If you’d like to add or remove questions that have already collected results, the best practice is to follow these steps:

1. Close your form so respondents cannot access it while you are doing maintenance work.

2. Export your results into an .XLS spreadsheet so you won’t lose them (if you remove questions, all results collected for that question will also be removed!).

3. Remove the data collected under the Results > Responses section – select all the answers, then click the Delete button at the bottom.

4. Make your changes to the form’s questions and structure.

5. Remember to open your form again once you’ve applied the necessary changes!

To prevent losing data from the responses you've collected, you can also set up follow-up messages, or connect your form to Google Sheets.