Using Survey123 Connect with excel 2007

[MiguelParedes]

Greetings all,

I'm trying to use Survey123 Connect for the first time.  When I click on New Survey, I get the New Survey form, but nothing else happens.  Searching just spins incessantly as shown below

I am using Windows 7 and Excel 2007.  Any help to get this going will be greatly appreciated.

[DerekLaw]

Hi Miguel,

Survey123 Connect is designed to work with MS Excel 2013 or later releases. Can you upgrade to a more recent release of MS Excel?

Hope this helps,

[MiguelParedes]

Greetings Derek,

Many thanks for the quick response.  OK, I will try to upgrade to Excel 2013.

I did look through the documentation and system requirements, but I did not find anywhere that a certain version of Excel was required.  If anything, I thought that maybe Excel 2010, but not 2013 and above.  If this is already documented, would you please point me to the mention of it please?  Otherwise, I would recommend that the supported spreadsheet software is added in the list of requirements for Survey123 Connect.

Another query that I have then is, are there any other alternatives to Excel 2013, such a Open Office, Zoho Sheet, etc., and if so, which versions of these?

Many thanks in advance.

[CarmelConnolly]

I have used Survey123 with Office 2007 and it worked but it lacked certain functionality like the drop down menus for example!

Are you sure your Survey123 ConnectBeta install is uptodate Miguel?

Carmel

[DerekLaw]

Hi Miguel,

> I would recommend that the supported spreadsheet software is added in the list of requirements for Survey123 Connect.

A good suggestion that I will pass onto the Dev team.

> are there any other alternatives to Excel 2013, such a Open Office, Zoho Sheet, etc., and if so, which versions of these?

You can use any other spreadsheet software you want to create your surveys, but then you will 'miss' some functionality such as the helper dropdown list options when creating your survey questions. This functionality is only available in MS Excel 2013 or higher.

Hope this helps,

[MiguelParedes]

Greetings Derek,

Many thanks for the response. I have checked with a colleague from Esri UK, and she has been able to run Survey123 Connect with Excel 2007 at a customer site.  Since what seems to be happening, as I am able to tell from the screen capture posted, is that Connect is attempting to contact a server, to retrieve information on the Templates and Samples. Is it possible that blocked communication to said server could be making Connect hang, and not necessarily Excel 2007?

[MiguelParedes]

Greetings Derek,

Many thanks for the response. I have checked with a colleague from Esri UK, and she has been able to run Survey123 Connect with Excel 2007 at a customer site.  Since what seems to be happening, as I am able to tell from the screen capture posted, is that Connect is attempting to contact a server, to retrieve information on the Templates and Samples. Is it possible that blocked communication to said server could be making Connect hang, and not necessarily Excel 2007?

[MarikaVertzonis · Accepted solution]

Excel 2007 is not likely to be the problem here - you can use any spreadsheet application that can open and save .xlsx (or even .xls) files. Some examples are Open Office and Libre Office. We have had some success with Numbers (from Apple) but you do need to purposefully save the file as .xls or Export as .xlsx.

Regarding the hanging, that is more likely to do with your connection to the internet. Do you have firewalls or proxy's perhaps?

[MiguelParedes]

Greetings Marika,

Many thanks for the response.  That is exactly what I wanted to know.  I think you are also correct about the connection problem. I can replicate the behaviour myself by turning off the internet connection on my laptop and then attempting to create a new Survey.  It just seats there, hanged, with the spinning searching message.

I have gone back to the person who is having the issue and suggested to check with their IT if there is anything that could be blocking their access to external servers.

So you have answered my original question which has to do with the compatibility with Excel 2007, and also confirm that it would work with other spreadsheet software.  Derek explained that the integration would not be as seamless as with Excel 2013 and above, but, as long as users are aware of the limitations, I don't think that is a problem.

Many thanks again.

[MarikaVertzonis]

The key message is that the Excel validation lists and hints are a bonus extra for users to get started building surveys. They are not part of the xlsform specification and are NOT required by Survey123. Purely a bit of Excel goodness to be helpful .