Opening & Closing Surveys
After you finish designing your survey, create a collector to send it out or distribute it. Collectors control whether your survey is open or closed to respondents.
You can check the status of a collector from the Collect Responses section of your survey:
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| OPEN | The survey is open to respondents and responses can be recorded. |
| CLOSED | The survey is closed and responses can't be recorded. Respondents who try to access your survey see your closed message. |
| NOT CONFIGURED | The collector isn't fully set up. Click the name of the collector to complete it. Email Invitation Collectors show as not configured until you send or schedule an Invitation message. |
Opening a Collector
After you create a collector, it's open by default. As long as the status of a collector says OPEN, people are able to access your survey through that collector and submit their responses.
You can re-open a closed collector at any time by clicking the CLOSED status. Clicking the collector status works as a toggle that lets you turn a survey on and off.
If your collector closed automatically due to a Cutoff Date and Time or Response Limits, you'll need to extend the date or maximum response count before you can re-open the collector.
Closing a Collector
Closing a collector stops it from collecting responses so you can finalize the analysis.
To manually close a collector:
- Go to the Collect Responses section of your survey.
- Click OPEN in the status column to toggle the status to CLOSED.
- Customize the closed message for respondents who try to access the survey.
- Click Close Collector.
If you have multiple collectors on your survey, you need to close each collector individually to completely stop collecting responses.
Editing Your Survey Closed Message
When a collector is closed, anyone who tries to access the survey through that collector will see a closed survey page.
You can customize the closed message that appears on the page when you manually close a collector, turn on Cutoff Date and Time or Response Limits.
- You can save one closed message per collector. If you have multiple collectors on your survey, you need to customize the closed message for each collector individually.
- The closed message can only be written in plain text. At this time, you can't use HTML to format your closed message.
After a collector is closed, go into the collector and click CLOSED at the top right of the page. From the drop-down menu, you'll see the option to edit the closed message.
Removing Branding on Survey Closed Page
- Web Links & Email Invitations (English only): You'll see the option remove SurveyMonkey branding when editing the closed message. Click Preview to see how the closed page will appear to respondents.
- All Collectors: You can remove SurveyMonkey branding that may appear as a part of the closed page if you're using the White Label URL (research.net) on your collector. Preview the closed page by copying and pasting the survey link in your web browser after you close the survey.