Someone opens your Google Form, or you open one you were sent, and instead of the questions there is a short page: 'You've already responded. You can fill out this form only once.' Sometimes it is fair, because you did fill it in last week. Often it isn't: you have never seen the form, or you made a mistake and need to fix it, or a colleague used the same account before you.
The quick answer: the owner turned on a setting called 'Limit to 1 response'. Google's help says that with it on, people must sign in to their Google Account to fill out the form. Google then allows one response per account. The message means that the account you are signed in with right now has already used its one go. It does not know who was at the keyboard.
The fix depends on who you are and why you need to respond again. Pick the line that matches and jump to that section.
- You never filled it in, but it says you did: you are probably signed in to a different account, or someone else submitted from this one. See 'Respondent: check which account you are signed in with'.
- You filled it in and need to correct an answer: see 'Respondent: edit instead of resubmitting'.
- You need a second, separate response, for example for another person: see 'Respondent: a shared account was already used'.
- You own the form and someone has asked to respond again: see the owner sections further down.
Respondent: check which account you are signed in with
Browsers stay signed in to Google, and many people have more than one account: a personal Gmail, a work account, an old school account. The form checks whichever one is active. If that account answered before, even months ago or on another device, you get the 'already responded' page. Google's own help for opening forms keeps it simple: make sure you sign in to the correct account.
To switch, Google's steps are:
- At the top right, select your 'Profile image'.
- In the menu, select the account you meant to use.
- Click 'Sign in'. If it is the first time you are using that account on this device, click 'Add another account' and enter its email address and password.
- Open the form link again.
- If the form came from a work or school, use that account. Google says forms created through work or school accounts are only accessible to people within the organization unless the creator changes the settings.
Respondent: a shared account was already used
This one catches offices, families and classrooms. A team shares one Google account on a reception computer, or a parent fills in a school form from the family account, and then the second person gets 'You can fill out this form only once'. As far as Google can tell, they are the same respondent.
If you have your own Google Account, sign in with it using the steps above and open the link again. If you don't, or the form only accepts accounts from one organization, there is nothing on your side that resets it. Ask the form owner, who can do one of the things in the owner sections below. Google's help page for respondents has a way to reach them: at the bottom of the form, click 'Help and feedback', then 'Contact form owner', add a subject and message and click 'OK'. Google notes your name and email address are shared with the owner when you send it, and the option may be missing if the form is stored in a shared drive.
Respondent: edit instead of resubmitting
If you only need to fix an answer, a second response is not what you want anyway, because the owner would end up with two versions. Google Forms has a setting for this, 'Allow response editing', which Google describes as the owner choosing whether someone can edit a response they've already submitted. When the owner has it on, the form lets you go back and change the response you sent.
If the form gives you no way to change your answers, the owner has left that setting off. Contact them, say what needs correcting, and ask them either to turn on editing or to fix it for you. If the owner turned on 'Send responders a copy of their response', the copy in your inbox is a handy record of what you sent, though Google warns that receipts can be caught by spam filters.
Owner: why 'Limit to 1 response' makes people sign in
To stop the same person answering twice, Google needs to know who each person is, so the setting only works with signed-in Google Accounts. Google's tip under the setting reads: to access and fill out the form, users must sign in to their Google Account. Their usernames won't be recorded unless you also turn on the 'Responses' setting to collect email addresses.
That has two side effects worth knowing. Anyone without a Google Account can't fill in the form at all while the limit is on. And the limit counts accounts, not people, so a shared account gets one response between everyone who uses it. If those are problems for your audience, turning the limit off may be the better trade. If the form still asks for sign-in after that, other settings can cause it too; we cover those in our separate guide on Google Forms asking people to sign in.
If you want to know who each response came from, the setting to look at is 'Collect email addresses' under 'Responses'. Google's help describes 'Verified', where respondents confirm the Google Account email that gets collected with their response, and 'Responder input', where they type an email address themselves.
Owner: let someone fix or resubmit their response
All of these live in the same place. Open the form in Google Forms, click 'Settings' at the top, and click the down arrow next to 'Responses'.
- To let people correct an answer: turn on 'Allow response editing'. This is the best fix for typos and changed details, because the existing response is updated instead of a duplicate being added.
- To let one person submit again: turn off 'Limit to 1 response', tell them to submit, then turn it back on. While it is off, anyone with the link can submit more than once, so keep the window short.
- To stop the limit causing trouble at all: leave 'Limit to 1 response' off and, if you need to spot duplicates, collect email addresses instead.
- If the form is closed rather than limited: respondents see that the form is no longer accepting responses. Google's help puts that switch under the 'Published' control at the top right, where you turn 'Accepting responses' on or off and can set a close date or a response limit. A response limit must be higher than the number of responses already received.
Owner: deleting a response
Sometimes the right move is to remove the earlier response, for example a test you sent yourself or an answer submitted from a shared account by the wrong person. Google's steps to delete one response are:
- Open the form in Google Forms.
- At the top, click 'Responses', then 'Individual'.
- Click 'Previous' or 'Next' until you reach the response.
- Click 'Delete', then 'YES'.
- To clear everything instead, go to 'Responses', then 'Summary', open 'More' at the top right and choose 'Delete all responses', then click 'OK'.
- Before you delete, copy or download the answers. Google says that if you delete any responses in a form, it can't be undone.
- If responses also go to a Google Sheet, check it separately. Google treats the spreadsheet as its own file in Drive, and its help on deleting responses doesn't say the sheet changes too.
- Don't rely on deletion alone to let someone respond again. Google's help doesn't promise that it reopens the form for that account, so if they still see 'already responded', turn 'Limit to 1 response' off for a moment as above.
Prevent it next time
Most of these messages come from turning on 'Limit to 1 response' by default, when what the owner really wanted was to avoid duplicates. Decide what you need before you publish.
- Only turn on 'Limit to 1 response' when one answer per person really matters, such as a vote, and when everyone you are sending it to has their own Google Account.
- If people are likely to make mistakes or details may change, turn on 'Allow response editing' at the same time, so nobody has to ask for a second go.
- Turn on 'Send responders a copy of their response' ('When requested' or 'Always') so people have a record of what they sent.
- When you send the link, tell people which account to use, especially for work or school forms.
- Test the form yourself in a private window, then delete your test response before you share it.
If sign-in is the real problem
If your respondents are clients or members of the public, a form that only works with a Google Account will always lose a few of them. OneSol forms don't make respondents sign in to anything, so a client can fill one in from any device.