Microsoft Forms: column headers are cut off - cannot match response to question

Question

Hi all

I created a Microsoft Forms survey. This worked out well, and I have used "likert scale" questions with a custom set of available responses.

My sample question have a title and include a small paragraph of text as a description.

However, when I look at my results in excel...

• I see that the column header is the beginning of my question title/description - but cut off.
• There is no indicator as to which subquestion the response belongs to.

Example:

"Question A

This is a long question description with some details and some links to other sources etc. etc. blah blah"

"Subquestion Alpha" disagree / neutral / agree

"Subquestion Beta" disagree / neutral / agree

What I would see in excel is:

Responses	Question A<br><br>This is a long question description with some details and so an1	Question A<br><br>This is a long question description with some details and so an2
...	disagree	agree
...	neutral	agree

Note:

There is no mention of "Subquestion Alpha" or "Subquestion Beta" in the resulting Excel. Instead it seems to add this "an1" / "an2" indicator, but that seems to be based on the order (which might change) and also doesn't at all tell you what the actual (sub) question was about...

Is there any way around this? I need to be able to see what the results belong to, otherwise the whole survey is moot...

Answer 1

What you show on the screenshot above is the "normal" behaviour for very short texts I assume.

For question description "QuestionA" and subquestion "b" it will generate the Excel result column header "QuestionA.b"

The problem I am facing occurs if the question description is very long.

Instead of "QuestionA" try it with the following, which was long enough to show the problem in our case:

"Trunk-based Development
Trunk-based development emphasises frequent small merges into the main branch, reducing complexity and allowing for quicker releases. It leads to shorter development cycles and less complex merges, promoting agility with smaller, more frequent code integrations, minimising the need for stabilising efforts and code freezes."

Answer 2

Hello Florian Gysin.

Welcome to the Microsoft Community.

I'm sorry to learn that you are experiencing problems viewing the collection results of your form via Excel, and I fully understand your confusion.

After reading your post, we have tested this issue, but in our test environment we did not experience your problem and all the data can be displayed normally without missing.

Considering that this feature is still in the preview phase, it is impossible to exclude the possibility that this feature encounters unanticipated errors when used.

You can try changing your browser to check if the same problem occurs. In addition, a poor network environment may also cause problems when generating Excel files.

If you continue to experience this issue after changing browsers and networks, I recommend submitting your feedback in Microsoft Forms:

We appreciate your understanding and support.

Best Regards

Eliac | Microsoft Community Support Specialist