Tired of manually collecting and consolidating data from multiple people into your Excel spreadsheet? If so, you probably haven't discovered Survey Excel yet.
Microsoft introduced Excel Survey a few years ago along with Office Online Don't pay for Word! 5 reasons why you should use Office Online Don't pay for Word! 5 reasons why you should use Office Online Office Online is the free, cloud-connected version of Microsoft Office. The limitations are offset by features, useful even for desktop Office users. Best of all is its Read more. However, you may not have noticed it if you haven't ventured outside of the desktop version of Office. The survey feature is only available in the online version, which makes sense as you will need to make your survey available to users over the Internet.
An Excel survey is a web form, which you design to collect and store structured data, in an Excel spreadsheet. You have many options when it comes to surveys or web forms. Alternatives like Google Forms 5 Awesome Reasons to Use Google Forms 5 Awesome Reasons to Use Google Forms If you've ever tried taking an online survey, you've probably tried a few tools here and there. No doubt you've enjoyed some features of one product and another, while being frustrated by... Read More and SurveyMonkey Take Free Professional Surveys Online with Survey Monkey Take Free Professional Surveys Online with Survey Monkey Read More may have features more robust, but when you need to collect simple data sets from multiple people, this tool will do the job seamlessly in the Microsoft ecosystem.
If you don't already have a personal or business online Microsoft account The pros and cons of using a Microsoft account with Windows The pros and cons of using a Microsoft account with Windows A single Microsoft account lets you sign in to one wide range of Microsoft Services and applications. We show you the pros and cons of using a Microsoft account with Windows. Read More From there you have two ways to create a survey:
From the menu, select New> Excel Survey
From an existing Excel Online spreadsheet, select Home> Survey> New Survey
You'll want to give your survey a good title and description so your respondents quickly understand why they're being asked to provide data. Next, you'll add a question for each piece of information you'll need.
Your survey questions will correspond to columns in your spreadsheet, and each answer will be represented as a row.
It's important to be clear about how you want to use the results before setting up question types. If you have data that you'll need to sort or filter, you'll most likely use a "choice" field to control the input. A "text" field should be used to get dynamic information that cannot be predefined, such as a person's name.
Browse the available field types and select the best one for each column. Then decide if you want the question to be required or optional, and if you want a default value to automatically display on the form.
As you can see, Excel Survey is a very basic tool that will probably get the job done for most situations. However, it has some limitations to be aware of. If any of these are a deal breaker, you might want to look at some workarounds. Top 14 Alternative Google Forms You Should Try Top 14 Alternative Google Forms You Should Try There's a world outside of Google and some great Google Forms alternatives. Find out if these web applications and tools are as effective for you as Google Forms is. Read more.
Now that you've completed your design, you should preview your work to see how it will display when you submit it. To do this, select the Save and view button at the bottom of the form.
This is what your survey recipients will see when you share the link with them:
Once you're happy with how everything looks, it's time to share! Click on the Share Survey button and you will be presented with a link that you can send to your target audience.
You have the option to shorten the link. This is optional, but if you want to do it, just click Shorten link .
After your survey link has been submitted, you can start monitoring your spreadsheet for answers and analyzing the results How to Use an Excel Pivot Table for Data Analysis How to Use an Excel Pivot Table for Analysis Pivot Table is one of the most powerful tools in the Excel 2013 repertoire. It is frequently used for big data analysis. Follow our step-by-step demo to learn all about it. Read more . The data will be stored in the spreadsheet the survey is linked to.
The survey in this example collects data to help plan an office party, but the possibilities for how you can use it are endless. You can create a poll for your team to track their time on a particular project, get feedback on performance, or even for your family to help you decide the location of your next meeting.!
Have you used Excel Survey before? What creative uses do you have for this tool? Please share in the comments..
