How can I tally individual votes when the SharePoint survey combines multiple choice selections as a single vote?
Today’s question comes from Linda and Yongwei in Shanghai:
“Is there a way we can have people vote on SharePoint to accomplish the following? We will provide a list of 10 candidates. The user is supposed to vote for no more than 3 of them by checking the box. We need a tally by each candidate at the end. The problem with our first implementation, using a survey, is it counts by the combination of the three votes. For example, if one person votes for 1,2,3, and the other votes for 2,3,4. The final tally says one vote for 1+2+3, one vote for 2+3+4, what we want is 2 votes each for 2,3 and 1 vote each for 1 and 4.
“What I want is something like this:
Bill = 1
Barbara = 2
Cathy = 1
“Here is screen shot. Is there any way to see for each choice how many people have selected it?”
After looking at it for a second, I started thinking about possible ways to do this, other than using a survey. What I suggested they do is create a customized list using each candidate name as a column and then use the count functionality built into the view of the list. Here’s a quick screencast to give you the idea. Let me know what you think.
Great tips! I plan to reference your blogs to my students :)
Thanks, Janis. I’ve also done the same regarding your post on when to create libraries. Let’s keep in touch.
Mark
I have been looking into this for hours. Excellent workaround. Thanks.
I have a poll question with 100+ choices. When creating a Survey I can copy and paste the choices from a spreadsheet. With the workaround, I don’t want to manually create the columns one by one. Is there an easy way to do that in batch?
Joseph – Move your question to Stump the Panel and it will get more exposure. This thread is almost a year old.
Regards,
Mark
Hi
My survey is having more than one multiple choice questions. Here you suggested to create a custom list for one question. So far more than one questions, should we extrapolate this approach? Should we create one custom list per question?
Hi,
How to Change message
“You are not allowed to respond again to this survey. ”
Sharepoint survey list
Thanks
Surendra
This may not be the cleanest method of reviewing results, but I have come up with an Excel macro that will break apart all questions on a survey and give you the results. All you have to do is Export to Spreadsheet your results and run this macro. I have stored the macro in my personal macros so it is always available. Below is the macro. Please let me know what you think.
Michael Kepley
Sub UpdateSurvey() Dim counter As Integer Dim row As Integer Dim row_answer As Integer Dim question As String Dim answer As String Dim answer_whole As String Dim answer_find As Integer Dim check As String Dim start_here As Integer Dim rfound As Range counter = 1 question = Worksheets(1).Range("A1").Offset(0, counter + 1).Value Do While question "" sheetname = "Question " + CStr(counter) On Error Resume Next Worksheets(sheetname).Activate If Err.Number = 0 Then Application.DisplayAlerts = False Worksheets(sheetname).Delete Application.DisplayAlerts = True End If On Error GoTo 0 Worksheets.Add(After:=Worksheets(Worksheets.Count)).Name = sheetname Worksheets(sheetname).Range("A1").Value = Worksheets(1).Range("A1").Offset(0, counter + 1).Value row = 1 row_answer = 1 check = Worksheets(1).Range("A1").Offset(row, 0).Value Do While check "" answer_find = 1 start_here = 1 answer_whole = Worksheets(1).Range("A1").Offset(row, counter + 1).Value Do While answer_find 0 answer_find = InStr(start_here, answer_whole, ";#") If answer_find = 0 Then answer = Mid(answer_whole, start_here) Else answer = Mid(answer_whole, start_here, answer_find - start_here) End If On Error Resume Next Worksheets(sheetname).Columns("B:B").Select Set rfound = Selection.Find(What:=answer, LookIn:=xlFormulas, _ LookAt:=xlWhole, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, _ MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False) If Not rfound Is Nothing Then rfound.Offset(0, 1).Value = rfound.Offset(0, 1).Value + 1 Else Worksheets(sheetname).Range("A1").Offset(row_answer, 0).Value = row_answer Worksheets(sheetname).Range("A1").Offset(row_answer, 1).Value = "'" + answer Worksheets(sheetname).Range("A1").Offset(row_answer, 2).Value = 1 row_answer = row_answer + 1 End If On Error GoTo 0 start_here = answer_find + 2 Loop row = row + 1 check = Worksheets(1).Range("A1").Offset(row, 0).Value Loop Worksheets(sheetname).Columns("B:C").Sort Key1:=Range("B2"), Order1:=xlAscending, Header:=xlYes, _ OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, _ DataOption1:=xlSortTextAsNumbers counter = counter + 1 question = Worksheets(1).Range("A1").Offset(0, counter + 1).Value Loop End Sub