Passwords and close conditions

Both settings are in the form's Settings tab. Unlike questions and design, they apply right away, without publishing.

Password protection

Open Settings → Password, type a password and save. Anyone opening the form's link now sees "This form is password protected" and has to enter it before they can see a single question.

• Once someone has entered the password, their browser remembers it for this form for a week, so they aren't asked again on every visit.
• Changing the password signs everyone out: people who entered the old one have to enter the new one.
• Remove password opens the form to anyone with the link, right away.
• Password-protected forms are always hidden from search engines, whatever the SEO settings say.
• Hidden fields in the link survive the password page, and so do embedded forms: the password is asked for inside the frame.

hootform never stores the password itself, only a one-way hash of it, so nobody (including us) can look it up. If you forget it, set a new one.

Close conditions

Open Settings → Close conditions to stop taking responses automatically:

• Close on a date: pick a date and time. It's shown and entered in your own time zone, and applies at that moment wherever respondents are.
• Close after a number of completed responses: for example, the first 100 sign-ups. Only completed responses count, not people partway through.

You can set either, or both, in which case the form closes at whichever comes first.

Once a condition is met, anyone who opens the form sees that it's closed, including people partway through it. In the dashboard the form shows as Closed, with the reason, and the workspace's list of forms shows when each form closes.

To take responses again, change the date, raise the limit, or turn the condition off. Publishing doesn't clear a condition that has already been met.

For closing a form by hand, see Closing and reopening.