---
title: "Collect Earth unanswering questions for random samples"
url: "https://openforis.support/questions/3386/collect-earth-unanswering-questions-for-random-samples"
tags: ["collectearthonline"]
status: "answered"
score: 0
answer_count: 2
asked: "2022-04-29T21:02:05"
last_activity: "2022-05-03T19:52:42"
source: "Open Foris Support - Q&A Forum"
license: "Copyright Open Foris, 2026. Some rights reserved under creative commons license."
---

# Collect Earth unanswering questions for random samples

Asked by anikaberger on 2022-04-29

I think there is a bug that's causing Collect Earth to unanswer a survey question for a sample that I've already collected and answered all the questions for. And it's unanswering the first question in the survey, so I know I previously answered that because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to continue on to the second question - which is keeping the answer currently.

Also weird - when I zoom out from re-answering the survey questions, even more samples have been unanswered:(


## Answer (score 0, by Open Foris on 2022-04-30)

Link: https://openforis.support/questions/3386/collect-earth-unanswering-questions-for-random-samples/3387

I think what you refer to is that the icon accompanying the plot in the left frame of Google Earth remains with the **RED exclamation mark** (the visual indication that a plot has no data collected).

![alt text][1]

This is indeed a bug in Google Earth that stops updating the icons. BUT the issue is just "visual". Meaning that even if the icon is still RED (indicating in unanswered) the data from the form is stored inside the Collect Earth database. 


SIMPLEST FIX: 

 1. In **Collect Earth** click on the ***Properties*** button
 2. Then just click on the ***Save & Apply changes*** button. This forces Google Earth to update all of the icons of the plots (the wrongly marked unanswered plots will change their icon to the **green tick** that indicates that they have been answered )

![alt text][2]

Also, if you click on a plot that has already been filled, you should get this dialog indicating that all the data for the plot has been filled and validated (you do not need to reassess it )

![alt text][3]


  [1]: https://openforis.support/upfiles/googleearth_2022-04-30_12-52-55.png
  [2]: https://openforis.support/upfiles/chrome_2022-04-30_12-45-37.png
  [3]: https://openforis.support/upfiles/googleearth_2022-04-30_12-54-17.png

> Thank you for your response. I think we are referring to different platforms. My issue is with the Collect Earth online site: https://collect.earth/ So I do not see the exclamation marks you mentioned. What it looks like is the polygons I drew and answered both survey questions for change their color to be black with a slight outline of the original color indicating the answer, but it shows that I need to answer the survey for that polygon again. (anikaberger)

## Answer (score 0, by kdyson on 2022-05-03)

Link: https://openforis.support/questions/3386/collect-earth-unanswering-questions-for-random-samples/3390

Hey @anikaberger, could you please share some additional information to help us pin down the issue? Which project are you seeing the issue in? And when you observe this behavior, are there othe users also collecting data? Finally, is it happening every time in every project or is the problem intermittent?