Edit Form by the CSV File

You can edit the existing form by the CSV file. The function allows you to change multiple questions or answer options in the form faster.

This chapter describes how to edit the CSV file (export/import), which encoding format you must use and how to fix error messages.

How to edit the CSV file

There are several editors you can use to edit the file, such as:

Microsoft Excel (desktop application);
For editing long forms.
Google Spreadsheets:
For avoiding non-English characters and symbols encoding issues. (Google Spreadsheets saves CVS files as UTF-8 encoded by default). Such issues may occur depending on the version of Excel and an operating system.

If you use an iOS operating system, we highly recommend you use Google Spreadsheets to edit the CSV file.

Text Editors (e.g.TextEdit, NotePad++, etc.).
For editing short forms or minor changes.

Export a form to the CSV file.
Go to the Edit form page and click the Import/Export (1) button. Chose the Export CSV (2) from the dropdown menu. Read more details about the CSV file exporting here.

2. Download the file and make your changes;

3. Save your file as UTF-8 encoded and close the file;

It is important to save an edited CSV file in UTF-8 format.

If the CSV file is not UTF-8 encoded, then non-English characters like ž, ä, etc., or other symbols (e.g.™, °C, ©, etc.) displays as question marks.

Google Spreadsheets saves CVS files as UTF-8 encoded by default. Use Google Spreadsheets if you have any issues with UTF-8 encoding.

4. Go back to the Edit form page.

5. Click the Import / Export toolbar button (1).

6. Select the Import CSV option from the dropdown menu. Choose your file to import and click the Upload file button.

7. Choose the type of update you want to apply and click the Import button.

The edit type allows to:

Add the question(s) to the end of the form;

Add the answers to the end of the answer option list of the particular question;

Edit the question and answer options.

2. The edit type allows to:

Delete questions and / or answer options;

Replace questions and / or answer options;

Insert page breaks between questions;

Insert questions and / or answer options into any position in a form.

Please note, form changes are applied and saved during the import process. Clicking the Cancel button will stop only those changes that have not been applied yet.
It's impossible to change a question type when updating the form through import.
The Add new questions to the end of the form edit type does not allow form layout design. Please apply the change manually in the application.
If you want to delete some questions or answer options in a form using the Update form by CSV file, you need to delete all rows you don’t need in a form after the edit.

If you want to edit a CSV file from another account, there are some things you should take into account.

Error Cases

If during the form update by the CSV file there are any issues with the file, the system may display one or more Error Messages.

If you imported a CSV file with errors, the system will display an error tab.

The Import button will be invalid;
The Errors section will show you the number of errors;
To fix the errors, click the CSV file with errors button to download the file with errors.

The NOTES column value corresponds to the error messages.

After you fix the errors, you can upload the correct file again.

Tips and Tricks

✅ How to avoid the import process taking too long?

Importing a file with many questions may take a while. If you want to change or add a few questions or answer options at a time, we recommend removing all the lines that have not changed from the CSV file and keeping only the lines that have changed. This will make the import process go faster. Editing the form this way is also safe because the questions and answer options that are not present in the CSV file will be simply skipped during the import process.

✅ Things you should remember about the INTERNALID column.

To create a new question or answer option, the corresponding row in the INTERNALID column must be empty;
The internal system IDs later will serve to specify which object to edit when importing edits from a file.
You can use the IDs when you need to refer to specific form questions when coding the custom CSS of the form.
If a question or answer has an empty value in the INTERNALID column it means that the system should create a new element in a form.
Please don’t remove or change the Internal ID if you need to update the form element with the specified ID.
All form questions or answer options that don’t have the Internal ID will be created as new additional questions and answer options in the form.

Read more information about the CSV file structure and the INTERNALID column features here.

✅ Are all changes possible when there are responses in the form?

Not all changes are possible when there are responses in the form. Changing formats, scales, removing questions and answer options, etc. is not possible when there are responses to the particular question that you need to change.

Please refer to the Import form from a file chapter for the information on how to specify new questions details for import.