With our Question Import tool, you can import up to 100 questions at once from a spreadsheet. If you are familiar with using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets and you can write out your questions faster using those programs, we welcome you to do so! We recommend starting from our template file to have a general layout to follow, but you can create your own from scratch with your program of choice.
This article will guide you through using Google Sheets to import questions into your Experience. Microsoft Excel will also work, as will just about any modern spreadsheet program. As long as you follow the layout and export your spreadsheet as a .CSV file, you can write your questions in practically any program you like.
Please note that importing questions will remove all crowd responses in your experience, as well as all existing questions and answers. That includes all Crowd Rankings, Crowd Activity, and Crowd Lead Data. Be sure to Export Experience Results & Data before importing questions.
Questions
When writing your questions in a spreadsheet, each question must go on a separate row. Column 1 should be the question itself. The entire question must be in the cell - do not spread it out across multiple rows or columns. You can adjust the width and/or height of each cell to make longer questions easier to read.
Column 2 should be the code for which type of question you want to include. You can set this to any type of question we offer: Multiple-Choice, Text-Answer or Numerical-Answer. You can also use Like or Dislike and Yes or No questions for Polls. Enter the appropriate code for each question in your file.
Question Type Codes
| Multiple-Choice | multipleChoice |
| Text-Answer | text |
| Numerical-Answer | numerical |
| Like or Dislike (Polls only) | likeDislike |
| Yes or No (Polls only) | yesNo |
Not for Multiple-Choice questions! Any row without a valid code will be assigned the Multiple-Choice question type by default. In fact, if every question you want to import is a Multiple-Choice question, you can leave that column completely blank.
However, if you will use these codes, please match them exactly! Because of this defaulting, our import tool will assume you meant to use a Multiple Choice question if the code does not match one of the ones above.
Question Points
Column 3 allows you to include a per-question Point Value through the import. Custom Point Values should be between 1 and 1000 points per question. For Polls, this column will be ignored, but it must be included for the import process to work properly.
Nope! You're more than welcome to include unique point values on as few or as many of your questions as you like, or even leave the column completely blank. Any question where that cell is blank or set to 0 will use the default Points Per Question value under the green Trivia Game Settings tab, under Trivia Format.
If all of your questions are set to the same point value, the default value on your game will be set to that instead of assigning a per-question value on each of them.
Question Time
Column 4 allows you to set unique time values for each of your questions, similar to the per-question Point Values in column 3. You can set each question to any amount of time between 1 second and 61 minutes.
Nope! Just like the Question Points column, you can include unique time values on as few or as many of your questions as you like, or even leave the column completely blank. Any question where that cell is blank or set to 0 will use the default Question Time value under the green Settings tab, under Playback & Timing.
If all of your questions are set to the same point value, the default value on your game will be set to that instead of assigning a per-question value on each of them.
Correct Answer(s)
Column 5 allows you to set the Correct Answer(s) for your questions. If you don't wish to include a correct answer on a particular question, simply leave that cell blank.
If you would like to include more than one correct answer, simply put all of them into the same cell, separated by "@@@" without the quotation marks. Our import tool will then create a separate answer for each one.
Setting up the row like this...
...will make a question like this!
Answers
Column 5 and onward will all become your answers. You can include up to 50 answers for Multiple-Choice questions. For Multiple-Choice Trivia questions, any correct answers from column 4 will be shuffled in with the rest of that question's answers.
Setting up the row like this...
...will make a question like this!
For Text- and Numerical-Answer Trivia Questions, you can include up to 10 Correct Answers. They will be included in the Correct Answer(s) section under your question.
These rows...
 |
 |
| ...will look like this after importing. | |
Exporting to a .CSV File
Now that your questions have all been written, it's time to export your spreadsheet. Crowdpurr only accepts .CSV files through our import tool. It is a universal format which any modern spreadsheet program is able to reproduce.
In Google Sheets, go to the File dropdown menu and select Download. Select Comma-separated values (.csv, current sheet) from that menu. Your spreadsheet will download to wherever your downloads go by default, likely onto your desktop or your Downloads folder.
Very simply put, it is your spreadsheet in a different form. Each row is converted into a line of text where each cell is separated by a comma.
You can actually open .CSV files in any text editor to see the results.
Microsoft Excel will still work when exporting as a .CSV file. However, we recommend that you set the file encoding to UTF-8 when you do. Some characters like apostrophes (') and quotation marks (") will automatically change in MS Office programs. This can cause problems when importing.
This help article on WebToffee shows you how to set the file encoding to UTF-8 in a variety of spreadsheet programs:
https://www.webtoffee.com/how-to-save-csv-excel-file-as-utf-8-encoded/
Importing Your Questions
On the dark blue Question(s) Setup tab, click on the gray Question Tools tab to open the Question Tools panel. Click on the Import Questions button. This will bring up the Import Questions dialog.
Question Tools Panel
Click the Import Questions button and select the .CSV file you exported from your spreadsheet program. After a few moments, your new questions will finish uploading, and your Experience will be ready to start!
Please note that this will reset your experience and delete all existing questions and answers in your experience. If you need to save your questions or crowd responses, consider cloning the experience beforehand and importing into the clone instead. You can also export your crowd activity to save it onto your device.
What's next?
Check out these articles for more information about the topics covered here:
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