Accepting responses
Whether a form is open is a single switch in the builder. This page covers how to flip it and exactly what respondents are told in each state.
The top bar carries a state pill reading Accepting responses or Not accepting responses. Click it to switch intake on or off. The change saves immediately, with no separate Save.
A form must be published before it can be switched on. Respondents are only ever served a published version, so switching intake on beforehand would put an unfinished draft in front of them. If you try, the builder refuses and tells you to publish first. This is rarely something you meet in practice, because publishing a form for the first time switches it on for you.
What a respondent sees
Section titled “What a respondent sees”| Form state | What a respondent sees |
|---|---|
| Accepting responses | The form |
| Not accepting responses, and it has been published | Form closed: This form is not accepting responses right now |
| Never published | Form not available, as though the form does not exist |
The last row is deliberate. Saying “closed” about a form that was never published would confirm, to anyone guessing URLs, that the form exists. An unpublished form stays invisible instead.
A closed form says so consistently: a respondent who had the page open before you closed it, and submits afterwards, is told the form is closed rather than that it does not exist.
A closed form, or one that has hit its response cap, also refuses file uploads, so a respondent cannot leave files behind for a submission that will not be accepted.
Scheduled windows and response caps
Section titled “Scheduled windows and response caps”An Open from and Close at window and a Close after this many responses cap both close a form on their own, and produce their own notices: This form is not open yet, This form is no longer accepting responses, and This form has reached its response limit. Both are set under Availability in Form settings.
Forms at or near their cap, and forms closing within seven days, are listed in the dashboard’s Needs attention panel.
Where the state is shown
Section titled “Where the state is shown”The dashboard shows this state as a read-only Accepting or Paused badge. The builder is where you change it.
For public forms on Experience Cloud: a closed form only reads as closed if the site’s guest sharing rule still shares it. That rule needs both criteria. See Guest access for public forms.