Publishing and sharing

A form's status

Each form shows its status next to its title:

A published form with close conditions shows as closed once its date passes or it reaches its response limit.

Publishing

Choose Publish in the top bar. Before anything goes live, hootform checks that the form makes sense to a respondent:

• It has at least one question, and every question has a title.
• Every choice, row and column has a label, and no two share one.
• Minimums are below maximums: a number's limits, a scale's range, the earliest and latest dates.
• Every logic rule has a condition, and jumps forward to a question or ending that exists.
• Recalled answers only quote earlier questions, and hidden fields that exist.
• Pictures, videos, logos and redirect links start with https://, and videos are from a supported site.
• Follow-ups have a condition where they need one.

If something fails, the form isn't published. The question list marks each question that needs attention, and its settings list what to fix under Before you can publish.

Changing a live form

You can keep editing a published form. Respondents keep seeing the version you last published until you choose Publish changes, and the header says Unpublished changes until you do. The same checks run again.

Answers are stored against each question's id, not its position or title, so you can reword, reorder and add questions without muddling responses you've already collected. If you delete a question, its answers stay in existing responses and appear as Deleted question.

People partway through the form when you publish continue on the new version from where they are.

Every publish is kept in Version history, so you can go back to what was live before. To throw away changes you haven't published yet, choose Discard unpublished changes from the ⋯ menu.

Sharing the link

Choose Share in the top bar:

• Link: the form's public address, https://hootform.com/f/…. Copy link or Open it.
• QR code: the link as a code people can scan with their phone camera, for posters, flyers, tables and slides. See Printing a QR code.
• Embed: a snippet to put the form on your own website. See Embedding.

To pass extra information through the link, such as where a respondent came from, see Hidden fields.

Printing a QR code

On the QR code tab:

• Print prints the code on a page of its own, with the Heading on the printout above it and the link below it, for anyone who can't scan. Leave the heading blank to print the code alone. To get a PDF, choose "Save as PDF" in the print dialog.
• Download PNG saves a large picture of the code for documents and slides, and Download SVG saves one that stays sharp at any size, for a printer or a designer.

If the form has hidden fields, the tab has a box for each. A value you type goes into the code, so every response that comes from it records it: print one code with source set to poster and another with flyer to see which brings in more. Leave a box blank to leave that field out.

The code points at the form's link, so it keeps working when you publish changes. If you close the form, people who scan it see that it's closed.

Closing and reopening

To stop taking responses, open the ⋯ menu and choose Close to new responses. Respondents who open the link, including anyone partway through, see that the form is closed. Existing responses are kept.

To take responses again, choose Reopen.

To close a form automatically on a date or after a number of responses, use close conditions instead.

Renaming a form

Rename in the ⋯ menu changes the form's name in the dashboard. It's also the page title respondents see, unless you set an SEO title.

Duplicating a form

Duplicate in the ⋯ menu (on the form, or on its card in the workspace) makes a copy to start the next survey from. Give the copy a name and, if you edit more than one workspace, choose the Workspace it goes in.

The copy keeps everything you set up: the questions, logic, design and logo, translations, and the form's settings — its password, close conditions, encryption, retention, email notifications, webhooks (with the same signing secrets) and Google Sheets. It doesn't keep anything that happened to the original: no responses, no version history, and no insights.

A few things are adjusted so the copy behaves like a new form:

• It starts as an unpublished draft with its own link, made from the original's latest draft. Publish it when it's ready.
• Each Google Sheets integration gets a new spreadsheet in the same Google account, so the two forms' responses never mix.
• A closing time that has already passed is left off, so the copy isn't closed before it opens.
• In another workspace, email notifications only go to people who can see the copy there.

If something couldn't be copied, such as a spreadsheet Google didn't create, the dashboard says so after the copy opens.

Deleting a form

Delete form permanently deletes the form, every response to it, and every file respondents uploaded. It can't be undone, so export anything you want to keep first.