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Setting Poll Defaults 

Learn how to set and manage poll defaults in Poll Everywhere 2.0 to save time and keep your questions consistent. This guide explains how to customize default presentation, participation, and response settings for new polls, as well as how organization administrators can set, lock, and manage defaults for their members.

Poll defaults are the settings every new question starts with. Set them once and each new poll picks them up automatically. You can still change settings on individual questions, unless an administrator has locked them.

In this article

  • Your personal defaults
  • What you can set
  • Organization defaults (admins)
  • Locking a default and exempting users

Your personal defaults

  1. Select the My settings icon (person icon, bottom left).
  2. Open the Defaults tab.
  3. Defaults are grouped into sections. Select a section to open it; opening one closes the other. A closed section shows the current value of its setting. Change any setting, then select Reset to Default (or Reset to organization default) to undo.

Organization settings, Defaults tab showing Appearance, Presenting, Participants, and Answering sections.

What you can set

Presentation

Setting Options
Default theme Standard, Organization or My themes
Waiting screen What participants see before you present and between questions. Select Edit waiting screen. Step-by-step guide: Customize the Waiting Screen.
QR code New polls start with the QR code shown or hidden
Keyboard shortcuts Turn the R, L, H, A and S presentation shortcuts on or off
Timer Auto-lock timer, 0–300 seconds (0 = no timer)
Question flow Live responses · Quiz · Question first · Manual
Results label Percentage or Count
Allow changing answers On / Off

Appearance settings showing theme selections, waiting screen options, and lock controls. Results label settings showing Percentage selected, Count available, and the setting locked.

Participation

Setting Options
Participation restriction Your organization, Teams, Courses
Anonymity On / Off for new polls
Name tag generation Friendly (e.g. Creative Otter) or Neutral (e.g. Guest 12345) for participants who aren't signed in
Audience reactions Default · Up / down vote · Upvote only · None · Custom
Correct responses in response history Immediately · After 3 hours · After 1 day · After 1 week · After 30 days · Never

Details 4Participant defaults showing participation restrictions, anonymity, name tags, and audience reactions.

Response settings

Question type Options
Multiple choice Single select / Multi select
Open ended Single submission / Multiple submissions (any number or limit to N)
Pinpoint (Clickable image) Single response / Multiple responses (any number or limit to N)

Answering settings showing options for changing answers and displaying correct responses in response history.

Organization defaults (admins)

  1. Select the Organization settings icon (gear, bottom left).
  2. Open the Defaults tab.
  3. Set the organization-wide starting point for Presentation, Questions and Participation settings.

Under Questions → Question types, admins can untick question types to stop members creating them. Existing questions keep working.

Organization Question types settings showing available question types with selection checkboxes.

Locking a default and exempting users

Under each organization default there's a lock control:

  • Anyone can change (unlocked): members can override it.
  • Locked: members see the setting greyed out with a lock icon next to it, in their defaults and on questions. On My settings the lock names the organization that set it.
  • N exempt users: select this to choose people who can still change the setting.

Organization Answering settings showing unlocked controls that anyone can change.

For Results label and Allow changing answers, changing the organization default offers Apply to all existing polls. See 2.0 Response Counts and Percentages and Requiring Participants to Submit their Final Answer.

If you have any questions or run into issues, please contact the Technical Support team.