Paused choice elimination

If the Form Limiter sidebar shows a "paused" banner — or you get an email about paused choice elimination — it means Form Limiter detected a Google Forms setting on one of your questions that conflicts with choice elimination, and has paused the feature on that question until the conflict is resolved.

The good news: nothing is broken. Your form responses are safe, the rest of your Form Limiter settings continue to work, and choice elimination auto-resumes the moment the conflict is gone. You don't have to remember to come back and re-enable it.

The trade-off: while paused, the question's limit isn't enforced — respondents can keep selecting options that have hit their cap. The banner, the question's row, and the email tell you exactly which question and (when we can detect it) which specific choice is the source.

Why this happens

Form Limiter applies choice limits by replacing the question's choice list with a smaller, filtered list (excluding choices that have hit their limit). When a question has per-option branching wired up — "Go to section based on answer" in Google Forms — that rewrite would silently destroy the routing.

Rather than overwrite your form without asking, Form Limiter pauses elimination on that question and flags it so you can decide how to proceed.

We tested every other setting we could think of (quiz mode + answer keys + per-item feedback, response validation rules, required toggles) and none of them cause this failure — per-option branching is the only known trigger. If the diagnosis says "branching" you can trust it. If it says "unknown," please contact support so we can document the cause.

How to resolve it from the sidebar

Open Form Limiter in the form and go to the Questions tab. You'll see:

• A thin banner at the top — a count of how many questions are paused (or at risk).
• The affected question's row turns red with an "Elimination paused" label. (A question that has branching and a configured limit but hasn't broken yet shows an amber "Possible conflict" instead — same fix applies.)

Open the question — click its row — to get the resolution panel at the top of its editor:

• Remove branching (destructive — only shown when per-option branching is the cause) — strips per-option routing from the question and resumes elimination. The choices and their order are preserved; only the routing wiring is gone. You're asked to confirm first — this can't be undone from inside Form Limiter, because Google Forms doesn't expose an "undo" for it.

There's no "Resume" button — none is needed. Once the branching is gone (whether you remove it here or fix the form yourself), choice elimination auto-resumes on the next response and the banner, row, and panel clear on their own. When the diagnosis is "unknown" the panel has no one-click fix, only a link to this page — fix the form and elimination resumes the same way.

To stop limiting the question entirely, clear its choice limits (set them to 0) in the same editor. The rest of your Form Limiter settings (response limit, schedule, etc.) keep working.

Or fix it in Google Forms yourself

If you'd rather keep control of the form's wiring, edit the affected question in forms.google.com:

1. Identify the affected question — the banner, the question's row, and the email name it for you, including the specific choice that carries the branching.
2. Remove the per-option branching:
   • Click the question, then click the ⋮ menu at the bottom-right of the question card.
   • If "Go to section based on answer" is checked, uncheck it. That's the conflict.
   • To preserve some routing logic, configure it at the section level using a page break instead — per-option branching and choice elimination are fundamentally incompatible.
3. Return to the form's normal use. On the next response, Form Limiter auto-resumes and the question's row returns to normal. No need to click anything.

What if I want to keep the branching?

Per-option branching and choice elimination are fundamentally incompatible — elimination removes options as they're picked, and branching needs the options to stay put so the routing rules can fire.

Pick one:

• Drop choice elimination on that question — clear its choice limits in the question's editor. The rest of your Form Limiter settings continue to work.
• Move the branching to the section level — add a page break after the question and route at the page break instead of at each option. Choice elimination then operates freely.

I don't see the branching setting

If you can't find per-option branching ("Go to section based on answer") on the affected question and it still shows as paused, the conflict might be something we haven't documented yet — every Google Forms setting we've tested other than branching turns out to be harmless. Please reach out to support with your form's edit URL so we can investigate. The in-product diagnosis will say "unknown" in this case.

Contact support