Disabling mode=edit links for specific forms once they have been sent out to respondents?

Question

Hello everyone,

I am trying to publish a survey where respondents can edit their responses until the survey closes. The survey is annual, so it is only open for a short time period each year. I have created an automation where once the survey is submitted, a link to edit survey responses is sent to the respondent's email.

My issue is that once the edit link is sent out, respondents are still able to edit their responses via the link even after the survey is closed. Setting the readonly column to TRUE offers a temporary fix, but once the survey reopens the following year this setting needs to be changed back and users would have the option to edit their old responses from the previous year once again.

Is there a way to disable the mode=edit links for specific forms once they have been sent out to respondents? Are there any workarounds?

Any help and/or insights would be appreciated. Thank you!

ChandraLala · Answer

For some reason, the conditional readonly statements (${current_date} = ${submission_date}) will not evaluate correctly upon testing and still allows for edits via the editing link. Setting readonly to TRUE is the only thing that blocks respondents from editing via the editing link. Still looking for solutions to this!

Note: Current_date was created with today() in the default column. Submission_date was created with once(today()) in the calculation column.

I also experimented with using an end type question to retrieve submission date and setting conditional readonly statements to now()-${submission_date}<1. This still allows for edits. Furthermore, I have tried using an end type question to retrieve submission date, creating a new integer field called days_past to calculate how many days have passed since submission (calculate: int(now() - ${submission_date})), and setting conditional readonly statements ${days_past} < 1. Both ways still allow for edits.

Setting conditional readonly statements to today() = date('2026-04-13') still allows for edits as well.

ChandraLala · Answer

Thank you for this suggestion! I will be trying this

abureaux · Answer

Probably a bunch of ways you could handle this depending on your set-up. An easy one may be a hidden date field (utcNow()), and then compare that date to the Create Date and dynamically set all fields to Read Only when the difference is more than some interval (e.g., Ready Only if difference >60 days)