First login - your user preferences

First Login
You have just finished installing LimeSurvey or you are a new (administrative) user given access to create, edit or view a survey or its results. The first thing to be done is to log in to the administrative panel of LimeSurvey.

Visit the URL used for your survey installation or the one provided by your administrator to access the survey.



Note: If your survey URL looks like http://example.com/surveys/, then an administrative user can access the login screen by adding admin/ to the URL to this form http://example.com/surveys/admin/. If all you have is the URL to take the survey, say http://example.com/survey/index.php?sid=27352, then remove /index.php?... and add the admin/ trailer.

In order to log in to your LimeSurvey installation, you will have to provide your user credentials:



Change your password
In order to change your password, you can use the 'Forgot your password?' button located on the LimeSurvey administration authentication page.



After you have typed in the requested information, click on the "Check data" button. If the data is correct, you will receive an email with the necessary steps that need to be followed in order to reset your password.

Another option to change your password is to do it from within your profile. For that, you have to click on your user name located in the upper right part of the screen (on the main LimeSurvey toolbar) and select the Your Profile tab.

Click on the Change password buttonː



Type the current password, and the newly desired password twice. Then, save the new profile settings by clicking on the "Save" button located in the upper right part of the screen:





If you have superadmin permissions and one of the users that helps you conduct the survey lost his/her username and password, you can help him/her reset his/her password. To do that, you have to access the User control panel:



Then, look at the Action column and click on the green pen button that corresponds to the respective user and change his or her password:



Check the wiki on the LimeSurvey user management functions for further information.



If you use LimeSurvey Pro, you can also reset your password from your LimeSurvey profile. To do that, access your LimeSurvey profile and click on 'INSTALLATIONS' (under the Profile Menu). Look for the RESET PASSWORD NOW button that is located in an orange box. Click on it and a random password will be generated immediately.

=Your account preferences=

To change your user preferences, click on your username which is shown in the LimeSurvey main toolbar and then click on Your account.



Your account preferences toolbar contains four tabs:
 * My profile: It presents general details about your account;
 * My personal settings: The user can pick up the interface languare and/or selected other LimeSurvey-related editing modes;
 * My personal menus: It presents a list with the survey menus created by the respective user;
 * My personal menu entries: It shows a list with those menu entries that were created by the user.



My profile
The following options may be found under this tab:
 * Username: once created, it cannot be changed from the LimeSurvey interface. We recommend to create another user name instead of editing the configuration of your LimeSurvey installation;
 * Email: Type your newly desired e-mail and click on the 'Save' button to save the settings;
 * Full name: It is the real name of the administrator;
 * Password & Repeat password: If you want to change your password, type the newly desired password twice and click on the 'Save' button.

My personal settings

 * Interface language: The language of the Limesurvey administrative interface;
 * HTML editor mode: The inclusion of an integrated HTML editor;
 * Question type selector: If 'Full selector' option is chosen, then a question preview will be shown when selecting the type of a new question to be added into the survey;
 * Template editor mode: If 'full template editor' is selected, syntax highlighting will be used in the LimeSurvey template editor;
 * Date format: chooses the default date format used in the administration interface.

Interface language
You can select the administrative language preference during log in by using the dropdown list as shown below. After a successful login, the LimeSurvey interface will change to the chosen language. The system will record this preference setting in your profile and make it the default for your next login.



Some LimeSurvey setups hide or skip the login page to enable common authentication inside other applications. In this case, you won't have access to select the language. There is nothing to be worried about since you can change your language preference from your account preferences. Access your account preferences by clicking on your user name located in the upper right side of your browser and then on the Your account button. Now, click on Your personal settings tab and select your desired language from the dropdown list located under Interface language.



HTML editor mode
There is an HTML editor integrated into LimeSurvey. This tool will help you develop rich formatting for your surveys, groups, questions, and answer text; for tables, images, and so on. But as this editor takes extra space on the screen and resources on the computer, it is not always desirable to use. Therefore, four options are provided by LimeSurvey: default, inline HTML editor (selected by default), popup HTML editor, and no HTML editor.

Default
If the "default" option is selected, you will inherit the HTML editor mode selected by the superadminstrator from the global settings of the LimeSurvey installation.

Inline
In this case, the HTML editor is always used in-line on the page. It also represents the 'default' value.



Popup
The normal text editor is used, but the HTML editor is available as a pop-up option. You can always get to the HTML editor by clicking on the icon on the right of the normal text editor window as shown for the popup option below



Fullscreen
This option is available only for inline editor. It allows you to increase the size of the editor to fill the browser window and then decrease it back later.



To make the system more convenient when you are switching between which editor you use, the last used editor before logout is recorded to your profile and will become the default at your next login.

Please note that when editing answers and labels, the normal text editor (or 'Popup' mode) is always used because of the larger number of windows.



Source code mode
If you want to paste HTML or Javascript code directly, you have to switch to the source code mode. This option is not available in your personal settings. However, it can be selected from the HTML editor menu.



You have to disable the Filter HTML for XSS setting in order to store code entered in the source code mode (or to have superadmin permissions).



No HTML editor
If you would like not to have any HTML editor, select this option. You will be able to use only simple text in the surveys.

Hint: Why not always choose the HTML Editor? Depending on your use of LimeSurvey, there may be many text boxes on a single page, each with a copy of the editor. For instance, when editing the email text for a survey invitation that is offered in 5 languages, you can then have a total of 20 inline HTML editors active on the page. Each instance takes a fair amount of resources and will likely cause issues on your browser. So, if you work with multiple language surveys, we recommend you stick with the normal text editor or 'Popup' setting.

Question type selector
Choose 'Full selector' to get a question type selector with preview and 'Simple selector' to get a plain select box. The 'default' option corresponds to the option selected in the global settings of the LimeSurvey installation.

Template editor mode
Three options are available: 'default', 'full template editor', and 'simple template editor'. Choose 'Full template editor' to get an enhanced editor (with syntax-highlighting) when editing survey templates and 'Simple template editor' to get a plain editor field. The 'default' option corresponds to the option selected in the global settings of the LimeSurvey installation.

Date format
This setting sets the date format for your profile (e.g. when you browse the survey results or for other settings located in the administration panel). It does not affect the actual surveys.

When creating a date/time question, you can set the date/time format when you edit/add a question. After you have chosen the date/time question format, type in the desired format you would like to use in the boxes located under the Input and Display tabs. For extra information, hover the mouse over the heading of each box.



My personal menus
You can visualise here the customized menus that are available to you or the ones you created via the menu configuration option.

To start editing them, access the Menu configuration option located within the Configuration menu.

My personal menu entries
You can visualise here the customized menus entries that are available to you or the ones you created via the menu entries configuration option.

To edit them, you need to access the Menu entries configuration option located within the Configuration menu.