topic Re: pulldata is not working for me and I don't know why! in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

pulldata is not working for me and I don't know why!

ScottMarkowitz — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 01:01:24 GMT

I'm fairly new to Survey123, and have been trying to understand why my pulldata equation isn't working. Here's the equation:

pulldata("boxad", "mgrs", "site_name", ${address})

with boxad being my .csv document that is in my media folder, mgrs being the the military field after being looked up in the site_name column. The input should come from the address question. What I'm trying to get it to do is assign the military grid coordinate to the number I've assigned to the nest box. So, nest box in the site_name column TA041 would return 10TET2514909437 from the mgrs column. Here's a photo of my boxad.csv file.

I've been trying to figure this out all day, and would be grateful for any help!

Re: pulldata is not working for me and I don't know why!

Neal_t_k — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:22:05 GMT

What kind of answer are you expecting in your address question? It would need to match exactly your sitename in your csv for pulldata to work, In your form, your ${address} question is a open text question and appears to be calculated from ${city}? A text question leaves a lot of room for entry error as the matching fields in the pulldata have to match exactly. Have you considered a choice list for the address question you have them all worked out in the csv already?

Re: pulldata is not working for me and I don't know why!

ScottMarkowitz — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:36:11 GMT

Thank you for the response, Neal!

The question that is called address is populated by the answer that appears in the field city. That city field is populated from the cascading dropdown choice that leads the surveyor to select the term from a dropdown, so the inputs are controlled. Those choices are the same as the site_name list in the .csv. I'm trying to get it to convert the information in the cities field into the military grid coordinate and display that on the survey interface. Is the problem perhaps that I'm trying to have it convert the Box Address text field instead of the Nest Box Number dropdown?

Thank you!

Re: pulldata is not working for me and I don't know why!

Neal_t_k — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 19:35:09 GMT

Given what you are showing I can't see anything wrong with it. You could skip the box address and just have ${city} instead ${address} in your pulldata calc. That said it should still work that way, and if nothing else it is a good way to check that you are suppling the correct format into the calc.

You may try single quotes instead of double in the calculation, I don't think it should matter, but sometimes it fixes things. If it is still not working, something isn't matching up. Double check all your column heading in the csv are lowercase and that the column names match exactly in the calc, that the CSV name matches spelling and case in the calc.

here is some good documentation on the topic.

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-blog/use-existing-data-in-your-survey-the-pulldata/ba-p/896889

If that doesn't work, you can always upload your xlsx and csv for troubleshooting. If you can't share the whole thing, pull out just the pertinent questions and a sampling of the csv.

Re: pulldata is not working for me and I don't know why!

ScottMarkowitz — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:01:58 GMT

I figured out to change the ${address) to ${city} and the single quotes about an hour ago after reading a bunch of advice online. Still not working though!

Thank you for the documentation on the topic, that was informative for sure. Still, though, I'm stuck. I've uploaded the .csv and .xlsx, and maybe you will see the probably obvious mistake I've made! It looks like everything matches up, and I checked for hidden spaces and all. So, I'm very hopeful you'll be willing and able to show me the way!

Thank you very much!

Re: pulldata is not working for me and I don't know why!

Neal_t_k — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 21:43:26 GMT

@ScottMarkowitz Column E in your csv is blank, if you delete it, it should work as expected.

Re: pulldata is not working for me and I don't know why!

ScottMarkowitz — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 20:03:57 GMT

Thank you so much Neal. You have unlocked hero status with us all here! It works!