How to Control Appearance Horizontal Column Width S123

[AaronColbran1]

For "Select One" choices there is no control over the appearance/width of generated columns.  Is it possible to limit the number of columns that display horizontally to say 2 or 3, when longer names are present eg "River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis)"  so the layout appears like;

Specie 1 (SciName)                                       Specie 2 (SciName)

Specie 3 (SciName)                                       Specie 4 (SciName)

and not

Specie                     Specie                  

1 (Sci                       2 (Sci

Name)                     Name)

and NOT using dropdowns or autopopulate that take time to open and require extra screen taps

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Aaron,

It isn't possible to set the width of choices.  That being said, I'm a little confused by the proposal - Survey123 attempts to use up as much space as possible in displaying the choice, it is dependent on the width of the device.

[AaronColbran1]

Hello James, thankyou for the reply.

While S123 does its best to present data in a readable way it does become an issue with readability when names almost appear randomly in the screen based on their length. In many databound control based applications you can select to present drop-down data as 1,2,3 or more columns so that it fits.  Even with some basic html formatting it could be more readable, such as align to the top of the cell etc.  The Likert appearance does it to a degree by positioning items at the top, but that soon gives way to width constraints.  The only real answer I can see is the standard dropdown for small lists and autocomplete for larger lists.

Cheers

Aaron

[abureaux]

I know this is old, but it was one of the fist results when I was searching for something else (I want to set a minimum number of columns, but I don't think that is an option).

There is now a way to set a maximum number of columns for either select_one or select_multiple. Use the Compact appearance with -# to set the maximum number of columns.

Example for a maximum of two columns: Compact-2

*Please note that this question was originally asked in 2018. This feature likely didn't exist at the time!*

[abureaux]

Sorry. I guess there were actually two questions in that original post. My above answer is just how to set the maximum number of columns for a select_one or select_multiple.

As for that second part of the question: no, you cannot set the column width/buffer/padding/etc yourself. I am thinking that the calculation for column width/padding/etc may have changed since the original post and so this part of the question may no longer be applicable.

In case anyone does stumble across this, I have two examples below. The first one shows that the item's label takes up as much space as possible. The second shows the result of specifying a maximum number of columns.

Appearance: Compact

Appearance: Compact-2