General FAQ

=Getting started=

If you don't want to read half the manual to get a feeling what can be done with LimeSurvey, we recommend you to watch some YouTube video tutorials:


 * How to set up an account and survey installation
 * Question type - Array
 * Assessments
 * Placeholder fields
 * Radio list
 * Copy/import survey
 * Import question

I need a quick introduction for LimeSurvey
For a quick text introduction to LimeSurvey, check the following two links:


 * LimeSurvey 2.50+
 * Limesurvey 3+

=Survey design and layout=

How can I remove index.php from the URL path to get a shorter URL
If you want to use fancy URLs (not have /index.php in every URL), please edit /application/config/config.php and change

to

For this to work properly, you must use an Apache webserver with a properly installed mod_rewrite module.

If you are using the Nginx http server (with php running via FastCGI) and want to use the 'urlFormat' => 'path' setting (see config.php), consider the following Nginx website configuration:

The end result should look like this:



Instructions for LimeSurvey 2
In LimeSurvey 2.x, the red asterisk of mandatory questions is set within the template.css file ("asterisk" class). To hide it:
 * Open the template editor
 * Create a copy of the template you wish to modify
 * Select the "template.css" file and search for the asterix class
 * Add the following line at the end of the asterix class".asterisk {display: none;}".
 * Save template.css
 * Clear your browser cache so that the edited template.css is reloaded and not taken from cache.

Instructions for LimeSurvey 3
The instructions are similar to the ones presented above for LimeSurvey 2.


 * Access the desired theme. If it is a default theme, create a copy of it by clicking on the "extend" button.
 * Access the list of themes and click on the theme editor that corresponds to the newly created theme.
 * On the left side, you can visualise the corresponding CSS files of your theme.
 * Click on custom.css and add the following line:


 * Save the changes. The red asterisk that is usually displayed at the beginning of the question text is hidden.

How can I embed a flash file?
First, go to Global settings and deactivate the XSS-filter. Please also read up the implications deactivating that filter has on your instance. The following steps will not work if the filter is active.
 * 1) Navigate to the place in your survey where you want insert your Flash file. This can be anywhere where you can use the integrated HTML editor, for example in questions, subquestions, answers, survey welcome/end text and many more.
 * 2) Open the full-screen editor mode by clicking the 'LimeFitWin' button on the editor tool-bar.
 * 3) On the full-screen editor tool-bar you will find a little button with a Flash symbol. Click on it. A dialog box will open.
 * 4) In this box you can give either the path to an existing Flash file somewhere or you click the 'Browse server' button.
 * 5) If you clicked the 'Browse server' button you will be presented with a file browser and on the bottom an file upload field. Choose now an existing file or upload a file first.

That's it! If you find this description incomplete please update it accordingly.

How do I create a survey which is open to everyone?
To create a survey that can be filled out by anyone, do not create a survey participants table! Share the survey link located on the overview panel.

Public registration - mandatory fields
If you use a survey participants table and you also allow public registration, then users will be prompted by the following message:



As it can be observed above, only the email field is mandatory.

To have all three fields marked as being mandatory, please edit your survey theme accordingly. If you use Fruity, you have to go to the registration screen and see how the participants email field looks like:

After that, make sure to edit the first name and last name fields correspondingly by adding the label:  and this line which makes the field mandatory to be filled out:

The edited file should look like this:

Now, the public registration page should look like this (all the fields being mandatory):



Hiding the language switcher
The steps to hide both the language switchers (near the survey title and on the top-right side of the page) are described in our wiki section dedicated to multilingual surveys.

Hiding "Exit and clear survey"
In case you wish to hide the button "Exit and clear survey", you have to edit the nav_bar.twig file located inside your survey theme.



The line that needs to be removed (or commented out) is:



Now, there is no option to exit and clear the survey.



Note: This customization can be used when you create long surveys and require from your respondents to save and resume later the survey. Sometimes, the users tend to click the "Exit and clear survey" button which deletes the entry from the partially completed responses table.

=Help, I accidentally...=

Version 2.x

 * 1) Access to your server with a command line (ssh for example)
 * 2) Ensure you have php command line access (see http://php.net/features.commandline.php).
 * 3) Go to your LimeSurvey directory
 * 4) Launch this command   or  The php can need complete directory access, example /usr/bin/php

Version 2.x.x and newer with only FTP access
See ResetPasswordController

Directly change the password in the database
If you have direct access to the Limesurvey database you can change the old password there by uploading the new password as SHA256 hash. You can create the SHA256 hash of your password here.

For example, you can use this instruction to set password to password: Here with prefix to lime_ and database selected.

How can I restore data from a deactivated survey?
We recommend to always use the time-out option instead of deactivating a survey. If you closed your survey accidentally, it is important that you don't change anything in the survey!

Then, and only then the following steps will work:
 * 1) Activate your survey again
 * 2) Select Responses from the survey toolbar.
 * 3) Click on Import and select the "Import answers from a deactivated survey table" menu entry.
 * 4) Choose your source table.
 * 5) Click on the "Import" button located on the upper-right part of the screen.

I deleted a question/question group/survey!
If you delete it, it is gone. Only a backup could help you recover it.

=Hard- and Software requirements=

For general requirements please refer to our installation instructions.

...regarding speed
There is no existing speed limit on LimeSurvey. Everything depends on how fast your server and your connection are. If you expect a large number of users within a short amount of time and you are not sure if your server can handle this, check our forum for similar topics! or contact an authorized LimeSurvey partner: https://limesurvey.com.

...regarding survey size
Note: 'Survey size' refers to the maximum number of questions (and answers) in your survey - don't confuse this with the number of replies on your survey (there is no limitation on that). Theoretically there would also be no limit on the maximum number of questions/answers in LimeSurvey. But the database engine you are using has several limits. The most important one is the limit on the number of fields(columns) in the result table.
 * MySQL ISAM: The sum of the lengths of the VARCHAR and CHAR columns in a table may be up to 64KB.
 * MySQL InnoDB: Maximum number of 1000 columns
 * MS SQL Server 2000: Maximum number of 1024 columns
 * Postgres: Maximum number of 250-1600 columns depending on column types. The maximum number of columns can be quadrupled by increasing the default block size to 32k. See Installation FAQ and PostgreSQL FAQ.

The mySQL ISAM engine is the most tricky one (see mysql documentation for more information). As it allows only up to 65,535 bytes per row and utf8 characters, it can require up to three bytes per character. The maximum may be only 21,844 characters (but this depends on your DB encoding).

You can roughly calculate the size of your survey like this:
 * Every multiple numerical question: 20 chars for each answer
 * Every multiple choice & array question answers: 5 chars for each answer
 * Every other question type: 5 chars
 * Add 10% for the usual overhead

How to increase the maximum number of columns in PostgreSQL
In case your survey contains too many questions, you can define a different block size in PostgreSQL to create more columns. This might be tricky because you have to recompile PostgreSQL and set BLCKSZ to a higher value, like 16kiB or 32kiB. Watch for the configuration option "--with-blocksize=BLOCKSIZE". For details see the archives of the PostgreSQL mailing list or ask there (pgsql-patches(at)postgresql(dot)org).

Instructions for Debian (thanks to Martin Pitt):

Note: the above could not be reproduced on Ubuntu 14.04 in August 2014. A patch is required (the configuration option is not enough). See (tested with PostgreSQL 9.3 on Linux): Instructions for increasing the maximum number of columns in PostgreSQL on Linux

Fatal error: Allowed memory size
Depending on your server configuration you might run into memory problems being reported by an error like "Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 233472 bytes) in /path/to/htdocs/limesurvey/filename.php on line 7296".

You can try to raise the limit by adding an optional setting to LimeSurvey's config file.

Please bear in mind that changes in the default settings of an application can always be overruled by global server settings. To increase the memory limit of your sever to 128M:
 * memory_limit = 128M to your server's main php.ini file (recommended, if you have access)
 * memory_limit = 128M to a php.ini file in the LimeSurvey root
 * php_value memory_limit 32M in a .htaccess file located in the LimeSurvey root folder
 * " ini_set('memory_limit', '128M'); " in your config.php

=Specific configuration=

Under certain circumstances, you need to update the LimeSurvey configuration in application/config/config.php

IE 11 and Windows 7 / Windows 8
There is a known issue with the session with IE 11, that leads to users not being able to finish a survey.

It is solved by giving the session a unique name.

This is done by adding this to the config file.

Two LimeSurvey instances on same domain
If you run 2 LimeSurvey instances on the same domain, but within different directories, you need to update the session configuration.

For example, if you have example.org/ls1 and example.org/ls2, update the ls1 config file: