LimeSurvey

Using LimeSurvey

Creating a New Survey

You can create a new survey, or you can create a copy of a survey. In general, it's easier to create a copy than to create a survey from scratch. This allows you to use a survey as a template.

  1. Click on “Surveys” at top of the page.
  2. Click on “Create a New Survey” button at the top left.
  3. Click on the “Copy” tab.
  4. Select the survey to copy and give it a different name.
  5. Click “Copy survey” button at the bottom of the page.

If you want to make changes to this survey only, make changes after you copy the survey. If you want to make changes to the template survey, make changes to the template survey and *then* copy it.

Activate a Survey

  1. Click on “Surveys” at top of the page. A list of surveys will appear.
  2. Click on the status icon in the “Status” column.
  3. Click on the “Activate this survey” button. (Make sure that “Anonymized responses?” is set to Off.)
  4. Click on the “Save and activate this survey” button.
  5. LimeSurvey will ask if you want to initialise the participants table. Click “Yes”.
  6. Add participants. (See below.)

Adding Participants

Prepare a comma-separated CSV file that contains three fields in this order: firstname, lastname, email. (Those fieldnames must be int he first row of the csv file.)

  1. Click on “Surveys” at top of the page. A list of surveys will appear.
  2. Click on the active survey.
  3. Click on the “Survey participants button.
  4. Click on the “Create” button. In the drop-down menu, select the “Import participants from: CSV file” option.
  5. Select your csv file and click “Upload”.
  6. Browse through the list of participants and make sure everything is correct. (This is your last chance to fix any mistakes in your csv file.)
  7. Click on “Generate tokens”. Click through twice more until this process is complete.
  8. Click on “Invitations and Reminders”. Select “Send email invitations.”
  9. Set up the email as you would like. Be sure to include a greeting, and the survey url shortcode.
  10. Click on “Send invitations”. LimeSurvey will email everybody on your list. Depending on your server's email configuration, this may take a while, or it may send them out in groups of 50.

Exporting Results

LimeSurvey will send an email to the survey administrator every time a survey is completed. You can click on the link and follow these instructions starting from step 7.

If you don't have the email, follow this entire process to export results.

  1. Login to LimeSurvey.
  2. Click on “Surveys” in the upper right-hand corner.
  3. Click on the survey you need to export results from.
  4. Click on the “Survey participants” button.
  5. Click on “Display participants”. (You may need to click through several screens, or just select “100 rows per page” in the bottom-right corner.
  6. Find the person whose results you want to export. Then click on the “View response details” icon (). A new window/tab will open.
  7. On that new page, click on the “Export this response” button.
  8. On the next page, click the radio button next to “PDF” and then click the “Export” button in the top right corner.