topic Re: Attaching an excel or pdf file to Survey? in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Attaching an excel or pdf file to Survey?

JohnnyHarley232 — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 03:11:02 GMT

Hello, I have a survey where I need an inspector to download an excel file or pdf file to their phone or computer. Is there a way to reference an excel file hosted in ArcGIS Online and the user can download it when they click on link inside of the survey?

Re: Attaching an excel or pdf file to Survey?

DeonLengton — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 07:18:17 GMT

Hi Johnny

I have done this in the past. You can create an HTML link in your survey to the document in question. Have a look at my blog about HTML links in Survey123: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/html-links-for-survey123-to-just-about-anything/ba-p/894670

Basically you follow these steps:

1) Add the PDF or Excel file to your AGOL by going to Content / New Item / Choose to add the file from 'Your Device' or simply drag and drop the file into the area shown:

Once you have created the item you will be taken to it's item page. From there you probably want to share the file publicly to avoid any sharing issues (unless it is sensitive information).

Once shared, you can copy the link to the file by scrolling down on the Overview page of the item and copying it's URL:

In Survey123 you can now reference the file with an HTML link by using a calculation on a NOTE field:

concat('<a href="file:https://esriza.maps.arcgis.com/sharing/rest/content/items/58bf71eb534741429c03a0f052e0f7fa/data" class="link external button button-raised button-fill color-blue">Open PDF</a>')

I attached the XLSX file for your reference to this post...

I hope this helps!

Re: Attaching an excel or pdf file to Survey?

GeoLINK_Admin — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 04:08:51 GMT

Hi Deon,

I tried the workflow mentioned but keep getting error of

"the custom feature service submission_url is not compatible with this survey"

Any idea? I would like my survey to be able to open an existing .xlsx file and entre data in it.

Thanks