Save-and-continue
A respondent partway through a long or multi-page form is not stuck finishing it in one sitting. This page explains what they get and what you should know about it.
The save-and-continue link they are given carries a signed reference to their answers, held securely in your org, rather than the answers themselves, so it keeps working regardless of how much they have filled in.
Saving
Section titled “Saving”Save and continue later replaces the form with a panel, wherever the form is served. It carries a status line while the link is made, then the sentence Reopen your answers anywhere with this link (valid 7 days): with the link below it, a Copy button, and Back to the form, which returns the respondent to their answers exactly as they left them. The form and its Submit button are off screen for the whole save.
On your public Sliick Edge address, Copy also confirms. It reports that the link was copied and settles back a few seconds later, and where the browser refuses a copy, which happens on ordinary locked-down configurations, it says so and leaves the link on screen to select by hand. Everything else on the panel reads the same on every surface.
The two buttons cannot race each other. Save is unavailable while a submission is going through, and Submit is unavailable while a save is going through, so neither a response nor a saved link can be lost to one click at the wrong moment.
Saving again updates the link the respondent already has, rather than minting a second one, so the link they copied always opens their latest answers. Submitting spends every copy of it.
What resuming restores
Section titled “What resuming restores”Everything: their answers so far, any rows already added to a repeating group, any files already uploaded, and which page they were on. It works from a different device to the one they started on.
Reopening a saved link says “We restored your saved answers”. There is no Start over button: to begin a fresh response, open the form without the link.
A form opened with a saved link always reaches a definite answer. It waits up to about eight seconds and then says either that the answers are restored or that the link is no longer valid, rather than sitting on “Restoring your saved answers…”. If the respondent starts typing while it is still loading, it tells them restoring has stopped and keeps what they type.
The link expires after 7 days, and an administrator can purge expired partial answers. Nothing accumulates: submitting the form discards the saved answers the response came from.
A lost link cannot be recovered. The saved answers are reachable only through the link, and nobody is granted read access to them, not even an administrator. A respondent who loses their link has to start again.
What respondents are told
Section titled “What respondents are told”| Message | What it means |
|---|---|
| Nothing to save yet | No answers have been entered, so there is nothing to save |
| This form is not accepting responses | The form is closed. See Accepting responses |
| We could not save your answers. Please try again | The save could not be sent. On a public form on Experience Cloud this is almost always the missing guest permission to save partial answers. See Guest access for public forms |
| These answers are too large to save | Past the storage ceiling for one saved set of answers, which typed answers do not reach. Suspect a very large pasted value |
| Your saved-answers link has expired | Past 7 days. The notice can be dismissed, and it clears by itself at the next page or the review screen |
| Your answers have already been received | The link was used to submit. This is a spent link, not an expired one, and the respondent is not invited to fill the form in again |
There is a short delay between saving and the link working. A link opened in the same second can report as expired, and resolves a moment later. Copying the link and returning later, which is how the feature is used, never meets this.
A save-and-continue link is spent once it has been used to submit, including every earlier copy of it. Reopening one says the answers arrived rather than showing them again, so a response can never be sent twice against a form’s cap. This applies wherever the form is served, not only inside Salesforce.
Submit another response starts completely fresh. Nothing from the previous submission carries over, and the second response is not dropped as a duplicate of the first, including when it is resumed a day later from a saved link.
When more than one source of answers exists
Section titled “When more than one source of answers exists”Where a respondent arrives with more than one source of truth about who they are, a record link, a resumed save-and-continue session, and their own saved draft, their own answers always win over a record’s, so returning to a form never overwrites what they have already told you.
Never prefill this field applies to record-driven prefill only. It never holds back a respondent’s own saved answers.