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Getting "You have either already completed the survey or your session has expired" - why?
I sent out a survey distribution about a week ago and now a lot of the people I sent it to are emailing me saying that when they click the link, they get a message that says "You have either already completed the survey or your session has expired." None of the people who have reported this appear as responses in my Data & Analysis tab - what is going on?
Best answer by lillianc
Many times when participants in a survey distribution 1) get an error when they open the link, 2) they don't appear anywhere in the dataset, and 3) their distribution history does not show them as finished, it's because the participant opened the survey, but never submitted the survey. This triggers the "partial completion" option in survey options, where the system "records responses in progress 1 week after the respondent's last activity" - in this case means it closes out their link and because there is no data, it does not record any data from the response. Often times, you will need to resend the distribution to these folks.
You might want to set a longer duration for the recording of partial completions if you think there will be many folks who open the survey to check it out but don't need to submit for a while.
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+7It is possible you set your distribution to expire rather quickly. I would check your distribution to ensure that it hasn't expired already.
I checked and my distribution hasn't expired yet. Is there anything else that could cause this to happen?
+7Did you send unique links, or the anonymous link? If the anonymous, is it possible that multiple users are attempting to use the same computer? If this is possible, you will need to turn off the "Prevent ballot box stuffing" option in the survey.
+7Many times when participants in a survey distribution 1) get an error when they open the link, 2) they don't appear anywhere in the dataset, and 3) their distribution history does not show them as finished, it's because the participant opened the survey, but never submitted the survey. This triggers the "partial completion" option in survey options, where the system "records responses in progress 1 week after the respondent's last activity" - in this case means it closes out their link and because there is no data, it does not record any data from the response. Often times, you will need to resend the distribution to these folks.
You might want to set a longer duration for the recording of partial completions if you think there will be many folks who open the survey to check it out but don't need to submit for a while.
> @lillianc said:
> Many times when participants in a survey distribution 1) get an error when they open the link, 2) they don't appear anywhere in the dataset, and 3) their distribution history does not show them as finished, it's because the participant opened the survey, but never submitted the survey. This triggers the "partial completion" option in survey options, which is by default 1 week or so. The system closes out their link and does not record any data from the response. You will need to resend the distribution to these folks.
That seems to be it! When I asked an individual, they did say that they opened their survey link right when they got it but they never actually started to respond to the survey. Thanks for the help!
Hello all. I am facing the same issue. My survey link has not expired. Usually people who have opened their survey link and did not respond, they have issue reopening the link sometimes. It shows survey link expired/completed.
Usually we let students use our office computers to login to their email and open their unique link to solve the survey.
Can someone assist me in overcoming this issue.
+27@Farjana - If you have a new question, it is best to start a new discussion rather than adding to a very old one. Anyway, I think the Accepted Answer in this discussion probably applies to you. Go to survey options and at the bottom of the page increase the duration before partial completes get written to the response data.
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Sadly, the accepted answer does not apply - the expiration is set for 60 days, the survey was started and stopped, attempt at re-distribution created the exact same link with the exact same problem in personal link. Anonymous also gives the exact same error message.
Frustrated that nothing incorrect was done but survey (for that person) is unusable as is.
+3From the answer: This triggers the "partial completion" option in survey options, where the system "records responses in progress 1 week after the respondent's last activity"
It's the partial completion period that applies, not the survey expiration.
Here's how to increase the partial completion timeframe - I personally prefer 7 days, because you will get delayed results from partial completion when you are looking for responses by quarters or months.
https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/survey-options/partial-completion/
This is not a solution. The solution is not to make us or the respondents find a work around for a scenario that is not uncommon. The solution is to change the product to account for these types of human errors. If someone opens the survey but doesn’t respond, it should either show up in the Data & Analysis tab with nulls in all the fields, so we can there reset the link to be open again, or it shouldn’t show up as expired at all.
That is the solution.
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