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ExcelAthlete's avatar
ExcelAthlete
Copper Contributor
Apr 19, 2023

Report text data from Microsoft Forms

Hi!

 

I was wondering how people usually report text feedback they've received from a Microsoft Forms Survey. I feel like I have a pretty simple problem that should be prevalent but I can't really find a solution for it. I've started trying to solve it using the Mailings function in Word but its proving to be very very cumbersome and inflexible. So I have a .xls sheet that looks something like this:

 

NameDepartmentNumberFeedback 1Feedback 2Feedback 3
JonHR5FeedbackJon1FeedbackJon2FeedbackJon3
DerekHR10FeedbackDerek1FeedbackDerek2FeedbackDerek3
JaneQuality0.........
MichaelQuality12.........
SusanAccounting8.........

 

What I would like to do now (in an ideal world) is get this Feedback into a text report but group it by Department und exclude any entries with number 0. It should look something like this:

 

Feedback Report - Period MM/YYYY (Ideally the period would change automatically based on a specific field in my .xls but I'm not going to ask for miracles here ...)

This is the text of a report that won't change and should only be once at the top of the document.

 

HR

Jon - 5

FeedbackJon1

FeedbackJon2

FeedbackJon3

 

Derek - 10

FeedbackDerek1

FeedbackDerek2

FeedbackDerek3

 

Quality

Michael - 12

FeedbackMichael1

FeedbackMichael2

FeedbackMichael3

 

Accounting

Susan - 8

FeedbackSusan1

FeedbackSusan2

FeedbackSusan3

 

What I would be looking for is sort of like a Power Query but for Word for a lack of a better description. Now the Word "Mailings" function sort of provides that but it seems it's rather made for having the same template per page, and not a continuous list. I know there's the "Next Record If" function for example, but it doesn't work for me and it seems it only works when the total number of entries is known. So if I have 300 entries I need to copy/paste it 300 times but if I have 350 the next month I would have to add 50?

 

So I guess my question is: Is the only and easiest way to get what I'm looking for really to sort of misappropriate the Word "Mailings" function and prepare a table that contains exactly what I need by pre-filtering it and then somehow get the Mailings function to prepare a list instead of separate pages? I could sort of see it working if I would be fine with having one name per page but then the document would be way too big and the grouping per department would not be possible and if I would want to group I would have to prepare a separate report/template for each department as I can't use more than one table apparently.

3 Replies

  • Lorenzo's avatar
    Lorenzo
    Silver Contributor

    Hi ExcelAthlete 

     

    TBH I'm not clear re. what you're asking - might be due to my lack of knowledge of Word's MailMerge functionnality

    The following is a quick and dirty Power Query approach that does "This is the text of a report that won't change and should only be once at the top of the document"

     

     

    (see attached file) Does this help?

    • ExcelAthlete's avatar
      ExcelAthlete
      Copper Contributor

      Hi!

      Thanks a lot for your reply! Technically the list would be what I'm looking for. By "technically" I mean the data itself is there and in the right order as well but I need to be able to format it similar to how I could do it in Word. The "Feedback" can be a few hundred words in multiple paragraphs so having this in Excel will make it unreadable. Furthermore I already have a report in Word that gets populated by hand but is way too cumbersome to deal with. Sorry I should've maybe mentioned this in the beginning.

       

      What the Word "Mailings" function essentially does is enable you to set up a "template" that gets populated with data from an excel sheet over and over, but unfortunately it seems very inflexible. So I wanted to know if there's some other way before taking my question to the Word forum.

      • Lorenzo's avatar
        Lorenzo
        Silver Contributor
        Not sure I can help you further with this :(( - Sorry

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