Surveys

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Plan a Survey

When thinking about sending a survey to users or other people, it's best to plan the kind of questions you want to ask, and what type of answers you're looking for.

Before you create a survey, it is a good idea to map out the questions that you want to ask and the type of answers that you want to receive. For example, do you want someone to respond with their own words, enter a dollar amount, or choose from a list? You should also decide whether questions are required or optional.

For people to respond to the survey, they must have permission to contribute to the survey or to the site that contains the survey. If they don’t have the necessary permissions, see the person who owns or manages your site. You can also consult with APAN staff for assistance.

As you develop questions, consider how you will want to analyze the data. For example, fill-in choices allow users to enter their own information. This enables more flexibility, if the user’s answer doesn’t fall exactly within the choices provided, but it can be more challenging to review and compile a diverse set of answers.

You can add branching logic to specific questions, so that the remaining questions in the survey are relevant to the respondent. For example, you can specify that questions about Internet topics appear only for people who say they regularly use the Internet. To specify branching logic, you first create the survey, and then specify the logic for the questions in the survey settings.

After you create a survey, you can add questions right away. As you add each question, you are prompted to specify the text for the question, the type of answer that you expect to receive, and any other settings needed for the question and answer type. If you need to revise your survey, you can add more questions or change existing questions later.

Types of survey questions and answers

Survey question types define how your users see the question and answer data.

• Single line of text - Use this type when you want people to type a word or a few words for their answer. You can specify a character limit and a default answer.
• Multiple lines of text - You can specify the number of lines for the response, and whether the response is in plain text, formatted text, or formatted text that is also enhanced with pictures, tables, and hyperlinks.
• Choice - This question type enables people to choose from a predefined list of choices. You can allow users to fill in their own text, in addition to the choices they are offered. The choices can appear as a drop-down menu, radio buttons, or check boxes. To enable users to select multiple options, use check boxes.
• Rating scale - This question type provides a summary question with detailed questions and responses that are rated on a scale. You can define the range of the scale, such as 1 to 5 or 1 to 10, and provide text to explain the meaning of the scale.
• Number - You can specify integers, decimals, or percentages, as well as a maximum and minimum range.
• Currency - You can specify maximum and minimum values, the currency format, and other settings.
• Date and Time - You can specify that the answer is a date or both date and time. The answer displays a box with a calendar that helps people to choose a date.
• Lookup - This type of question offers answers that are stored as a column in another list. With a lookup question, the choices offered are the same as the contents of the corresponding list.
• Yes/No - This question appears as text followed by a single check box. A selected check box is considered Yes. The words Yes or No do not actually appear. If you want Yes or No to appear with your question, create a Choice question and then enter Yes and No as the choices.
• Person or Group - This option enables respondents to browse or search the directory service for values to use as answers. For example, if the answer to the question should be the name of a person in your organization, the respondent can select that person's name from your directory service.
• Page Separator - You can add a page break between questions by adding a page separator to your survey.
• Managed Metadata - This option enables users to browse from managed term sets that have been defined for your site. For example, if you or your site administrator is managing the names of your company’s departments so that people use them consistently throughout your site, you could specify the Department term set to show a list of available departments.

After you create the survey, people can see a Respond to this Survey link that they can click to launch the survey.

You can let people know about the survey by sending out a link to it, adding an announcement about it, blogging about it, or linking to it from other sites. Once users start completing the survey, you can see their responses in a bar chart or as list items.

Create a Survey

1. In SharePoint, navigate to the site where you want to add the survey.
2. In SharePoint, select Settings  , and then select Add an app.
3. On the Your Appspage, in the search box, enter survey.Select the Survey icon.

Note: You may have a choice of internal or third-party survey apps, if your company allows them. For advice on which to use, contact your SharePoint administrator .

4. In the Adding Surveybox, select Advanced Options.

You can also just enter a name, select Create, and then change settings and add questions later.

5. Enter a name for the survey.
6. In the Descriptionfield, enter a description of the survey. The description is optional.
7. In the Survey Optionssection, specify whether you want people's names to appear with their responses and whether people can respond more than once to the survey.
8. Select Next.
9. On the New Question page, enter your question text, and then select the type of answer that you want in the Question and Typesection for your first question.

Note: There currently is no way to number questions for display, as you can't add additional columns to a Survey. If you want your questions number, put the number into the Question Name. Questions are added sequentially when you created them, however you can change the order of the questions from the settings page.

10. In the Additional Question Settingssection, specify additional settings for your question, such as whether an answer to the question is required. Depending on the type of question, you can also enter answers to choose from and an optional default value.
11. If you want to add branching logic, that is the survey asks different questions based on what the last answer was, you'll need to finish creating the survey first. You can then go to the Survey Settingspage and add branching logic. For more info, see Add branching logic to a survey.
12. In the Column Validationsection, if you want to check whether an answer is valid, enter the formula you want to use for validation in the Formula In the User Message box, describe what the user needs to do to ensure the answer is valid. For example, if you’re asking an employee to enter the amount of time she’s worked in a department, you can specify that it could not be longer than the total time she’s worked for the company. For more info on formulas, see Examples of common formulas in SharePoint Lists.
13. Do one of the following:
    • To create additional questions, click Next Question, and then enter information for the next question. Continue the process until you add all the questions that you want.
    • If you are finished adding questions, select Finish.
14. To see your survey, under Recent in the Quick Launch bar, select the survey's name.

Change the Survey Order

Questions are listed in sequence as you create them, but sometimes you need to change the order. For example, you are using Branching logic and want all questions pertaining to a subject to be asked before branching. To change order, follow these steps.

1. Navigate to the survey that you want to change question order.
2. In the header of the survey, select Settings, and then select Survey Settings.
3. In the Settingsdialog, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and select Change the order of the questions.
4. In the Change Column Orderingdialog, change the numbers under Position from Top to put the questions in the order you want.
5. Select OK, and under the Quick Launch bar or in the breadcrumbs, select the survey name.

Delete All Data from an Existing Survey

Once you've used and finished with a SharePoint survey, you can delete all the responses, but keep the questions for reuse.

1. Navigate to the Microsoft 365 or SharePoint site you want to delete the survey data from.
2. In the address line, put sitemanager.aspx after /_layouts/ after the company or site name, and then press Enter.

Some locations in SharePoint don't always have /_layouts/ in the web address. If the line doesn't have /_layouts/ in the address, replace everything after the company or site name with /_layouts/sitemanager.aspx.

For example, if your site is the Contoso Mining site, your address line would look like this: http://contoso.com/sites/Contosomining/_layouts/sitemanager.aspx. SharePoint may automatically put a number that coincides with your version between /_layouts/ and sitemanager.aspx, you can ignore this.

3. In Site Manageror Site Content and Structure, click the name of your survey in the Quick Launch bar on the left.
4. Click the select all  icon at the top of the selection column.

If you want to delete some of the answers, just click the boxes you want to remove.

5. Click Actions, and then click Delete.
6. Click OK.
7. To return to your site, click Site Settingsin the breadcrumbs, and then click Home or the page you want to go to in the Quick Launch

Distribute a Survey for Response

A SharePoint survey is part of your site, so anyone with that can see lists and libraries will be able to see the survey. Your users must have contribute permissions to be able to respond to the survey.

Put the Survey on your Home SharePoint Page

You can put the survey on your home page by inserting it as an App Part.

For more info, see Add an App Part to a page.

Manage Results of a Survey

Once you've created and implemented your SharePoint survey, you need to view and manage the results you've gotten. Here's how to view one or more results in text or graphic format, and how to export to Excel to analyze further.

See an overview of a survey and its responses

To see an overview of your survey and its responses, click the name of the survey on the Quick Launch. If the name of your survey does not appear, click View All Site Content or Site Content, and then click the name of your survey.

The overview page shows a description of the survey and the number of responses. From the overview page, if you have permissions, you can click links to see a graphical summary of responses or to view a list of all responses. If you are a survey respondent and you don't have permission to see other responses, you can click a link to see and edit the text of your own response, including a partial response.

View a single survey response

1. If the survey is not already open, click its name on the Quick Launch.

If the name of your survey does not appear, click View All Site Content or Site Content, and then click the name of your survey.

2. Click Show all responses.
3. Click the response that you want to view.

To view your response, you must have permission to read content on the site. To view someone else's response, you must have permission. The person who set up your survey can specify whether people can view all responses or only their own responses. For more info see View permissions on a survey.

View all survey responses

To view all responses, you must have permission. The person who set up your survey can specify whether people can view all responses or only their own.

1. If the survey is not already open, click its name on the Quick Launch.

If the name of your survey does not appear, click View All Site Content or Site Content, and then click the name of your survey.

2. Click Show all responses.

To view your response, you must have permission to read content on the site. To view someone else's response, you must have permission. The person who set up your survey can specify whether people can view all responses or only their own responses. 

Switch between views

You can quickly switch between an Overview, All Responses, or a Graphical Summary when looking at survey results.

1. In any view of your survey, click the current view in the View: field at the right top of the frame.
2. You can then choose any of the other views from the drop down list.

View a graphical summary of all responses

The survey questions, number of responses, and percentages appear in the graphical view of summary responses.

Only the responses that are complete appear in the graphical summary. A survey response is considered complete after the respondent views every page and then clicks Finish on the last page.

To view all responses, you must have permission. The person who set up your survey can specify whether people can view all responses or only their own responses.

1. If the survey is not already open, click its name on the Quick Launch.

If the name of your survey does not appear, click View All Site Content or Site Content, and then click the name of your survey.

2. Click Show a graphical summary of responses.

Export responses to a spreadsheet

To export responses, you need a spreadsheet program installed that is compatible with Windows SharePoint Services.

1. If the survey is not already open, click its name on the Quick Launch.

If the name of your survey does not appear, click View All Site Content or Site Content, and then click the name of your survey.

2. On the survey's Actionsmenu   , click Export to Spreadsheet.
3. Follow the prompts from your spreadsheet program to open and activate the file, if you believe the data on the SharePoint site is safe.

Note: You may be prompted by your spreadsheet program to specify how you want to view the data, such as in an existing spreadsheet or in a new spreadsheet.

4. If prompted to specify how you want to view the data, select the options that you want (such as in a new spreadsheet), and then click OK.

SharePoint and then open the file in Excel, or just open it and save it as a standard .xlsx or .xls format. You can also save it as any other Excel compatible format.