How to create an anonymous SharePoint survey

By default a SharePoint Survey shows the user names of each responses in the results. However, it's often a common requirement to be able to hide the identity of the respondent. This post will explain the steps to achieve this using the SharePoint Survey.

Here's how to create an anonymous survey.

1. Click on Settings Survey settings

survey settings

2. Under General Settings - click 'List name, description and navigation'

list name description and navigation

3. Then under the sub heading 'Survey Options ' for the setting 'Show user names in survey results?' - Set to 'No'

set show user names to no

4. Then click 'Save'

Once this is complete, the resulting effect is that the user name will be masked out (using stars) to all who view it.

anonymous survey response

If you wish to see user names again, then follow the instructions again but click 'Yes' to reverse the procedure.

To see this in action, you can also watch the video here :

Would you like to get more responses from your surveys?

Find out how

Be warned - it can be bypassed!

Although this will suit most usages it does have some drawbacks. A user who has "Full Control" over the SharePoint site can obviously reverse this setting, by showing user names. Also if you export the data to Excel the user names aren't masked.

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