Responses changing from number to text

[dfox74]

I've set up a survey in Forms to be used to count attendance for an organization on a weekly basis. There are 7 different questions to input a number for the count in different sections. I've set the restrictions on all the questions, and when I pull up the survey on my phone browser I can see the answer box says "The value must be a number." But when the answers are submitted, they are being changed to text; the Excel spreadsheet shows the answer is '59, instead of 59. The cell format also shows that it should be number.

The problem is that I have some formulas built in the Excel spreadsheet recording the answers, and they obviously cannot work if the answers are text. Is anyone else dealing with this problem? Any ideas how to fix it?

[#2]

I have the same issue. It changed all of a sudden a couple weeks ago and now I need to change all values manually to number before I can import the sheet into access.

Please microsoft, fix this...

[#3]

@dfox74 

Having the same issues on multiple different Forms + Excel pairings, except for one. Still haven't figured out the difference.

[#4]

This still hasn’t been fixed. Waiting for Microsoft to address it.

[#5]

@dfox74 I am still having this issue with a form that worked great all of last year.

[#6]

@DowneyECISD Me too. Every week I have to go in and retype the entry in the Microsoft Excel results as numbers, then the sheet will calculate correctly.

[#7]

@mrVazil are you still having the same issue? It is ongoing for me.

[#8]

@Movaan Did you ever find a reason for the difference for why the one is working as expected?

[#9]

@dfox74 Unfortunately no. And no changes here.

[#10]

@dfox74 I've just decided to forget this and use CLEAN-function to convert my answers.

[#11]

@dfox74 I am having the same issue and it is very frustrating. Anyone figure out a solve? 

[#12]

@alyssat I use as a work around CLEAN-function in a new column (ie. =CLEAN([@Number])*1). This way you will have usable number that won't break your functions.

[#13]

@Movaan While the issue can be resolved with the CLEAN formula, it is an extra step that should not be needed. The Form is setup with that field requiring a number and it should export into Excel as a number, like it used to. My problem still exists and requires the recalculations as my Excel data is being imported into an Access Database. When the number field remained a number this was not an issue.

[#14]

@DowneyECISD couldn't agree more.

[#15]

It's October 2020 and I do have the same problem, CLEAN step from @Movaan is a good solution, however #Microsoft should be aware of this and solve this issue.

[#16]

@dfox74 thanks for reporting this issue. We will have our engineers to take a look. 

[#17]

This issue is being commented on for over a year now? What are your engineers saying?
Thanks.

[#18]

@Movaan I was working on a responses that has number stored as text, and, since I needed to do a calculation based on the responses (to utilized its data and save time from moving the responses to another worksheet) I would need to convert the number stored as text into a number or value for a calculation to work. 
So I tried using the CLEAN function as you had suggested, though it removes the unprintable character ( ' ), there's still a need to convert the results into a values manually.
I found this VALUE ie. =VALUE(text or cell) function which convert the number stored as text to value. This can also be a work around.
All the best.

[#19]

@dfox74 I see this issue is from 2019 and now in 2021 it seems still not fixed. Do we really have to work with a workaround?

[#20]

@MetaverseSCS 

My workaround was to create new columns off to the side of my table and use
= targetcolumn * 1

It worked fine but agree this shouldn't need to be done!