To edit an existing question:
- In the left pane of the Survey Designer, navigate to the question to edit.
- In the right pane of the Survey Designer, double click on the question to edit.
Why Can’t I Edit a Question?
Some questions in the right pane of the Survey Designer may appear to be grayed out. This means that the question is only partially editable. There are two reasons for this:
- It is a published survey that has already collected data.
- The question came from the repository.
Editing Questions on a Published Survey
Certain parts of questions belonging to published questions cannot be edited without potentially corrupting the survey data. Within a published survey you cannot:
- Change the data type associated to a question.
- Change the value associated to a response option.
- Delete a question, but you can set it to the show state never shown.
If you must make these types of edits, you must either clone the survey and make your edits in the clone, or disable (i.e. set to “never shown”) the problematic items and create new items.
Editing a Repository Item
Repository items have the same editing restrictions as published survey items. Repository items are intended to be the same across all of the surveys in which they appear. This allows data analysts to query a consistent set of data across multiple surveys. Changing the prompt or scale values of a repository item would violate this guarantee, introducing inconsistencies to the data. If you must edit the question’s prompt or scale values, you can:
- break the item’s link to the repository
- edit the item directly in the repository
Both of these options have consequences. Breaking the question’s link to the repository makes the question unavailable for cross-survey queries. This affects only the survey you are working on. Editing the question in the repository changes how the question will appear in all future surveys that use it. Follow the links to Repository Overview, Editing Repository Items, and Breaking a Link to the Repository below.