Deleting & Recovering Responses

Sometimes a response is a test run, a duplicate, or clearly low quality and you’d rather it not affect your results. SurveyMethods gives you two ways to handle this: hide a response (reversible) or delete it (permanent).

Where to Manage Responses

Open the Analyze section for your survey and go to the Responses page. Switch to the Table view to see every respondent as a row. Each row has action icons on the right for hiding, deleting, and viewing the full response.

Hide vs. Delete

Action	What happens	Reversible?
Hide	The response stays in your data but is excluded from charts, summaries, and reports	Yes, you can unhide it
Delete	The response and all of its answers are permanently removed	No

Hiding is the safer choice when you’re unsure. Deleting cannot be undone.

Hiding and Unhiding Responses

Hiding is available on plans that include response quality features.

1. In the Table view, find the response you want to hide.
2. Click the eye icon in the row’s action column to hide it.
3. Click the same icon again to unhide it.

To act on several at once, tick the checkboxes on the rows you want, then use the Hide or Unhide buttons in the batch action bar.

By default, hidden responses are removed from the table. Tick Show hidden responses to reveal them again, marked with a Hidden label.

Deleting a Response

1. In the Table view, click the trash icon on the response’s row.
2. A confirmation dialog warns that the action is irreversible.
3. Click Delete to permanently remove the response and its answers.

Deleted responses no longer count toward your totals and are gone from every report. If you only need to set a response aside temporarily, hide it instead.

Next Steps

Once your data reflects only the responses you want, continue to analyzing your survey results to build charts and export reports.

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Need help? Browse more articles in the Managing Surveys section.