Surveys and Forms in Excel

Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast, Episode 2226: Surveys and Forms in Excel.

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Check that out, baby. Called up to the show working for Microsoft Press now, new book, "Excel 2019, Inside Out." I've been working on this book almost-- almost-- finished it yesterday, when all of a sudden-- all of a sudden-- here on the insert tab pops up a brand new icon called Insert Forms-- Insert Forms-- holy smokes. So I sent out a tweet-- I asked for people to give it a try-- I take my two questions survey to help test it out and thanks to all of you who gave the answer. So, it's a simple survey, enter your first name, what is your favorite tip for Excel, and, you know, it worked. People started sending in their tips. This is great. Off to a whole bunch of new podcast content.

Going through all of these, you see that someone decided they didn't want to answer my questions and that's fine. And then someone else-- let's see who, Mario-- Mario-- Ctrl+Tilde, but you're right Mario. It's not Ctrl+Tilde, it's a control [Inaudible at 00:01:16]. Thanks for stopping back in. 45 seconds later, 50 seconds later, all this data just came right into my Excel spreadsheet. It's just awesome.

Alright, so here, let's try it out. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to ask the same survey that I ask in all my seminars. This is-- I create a pivot table from this. What's your favorite number? Coke or Pepsi-- and I accept write-in votes and then zip code or postal code if you're somewhere else. Alright, so we're going to start a brand new workbook-- Ctrl+N for new-- and then from here, Insert, Forms, a New Form, and it wants me to save and we'll call it Podcast2226 survey, Click OK. Alright, rock on. Here we are-- forms.office.com. There's my title. It was actually a horrible. Three Questions for A Pivot Table. Answer these questions and have a chance to win my new book. Alright, add a question. First question is, What's your favorite number? So, that's just simple text. Question: What is your favorite number? Simple enough-- it's not a long answer. Yes required. And then, Add Question. Now, this one's going to be a choice, and I love these choice questions. So, question number two, this always gets a laugh from people, Coke or Pepsi? All right, but it's funny, you know, it's about 50/50 Coke or Pepsi, but then it's-- no, it's not 50/50, it's 40/40 because I get some people who are really upset with that question because they don't drink soda anymore, right? And so they always want to answer something else, and I'm very happy to take any other answer so I'll add an "Other" option-- Other-- so you can click into Other and type anything else-- water is the number three answer there. Required, Yes. Add a question, and this will just be text, it'll be Zip Code or Postal Code if not in the US. Alright, and enter your answer required. Yes. Alright. Now, that's it. We're actually done so we can go back here to questions. You see we've created a three question survey of what-- that took a minute.

Now, here's what I love-- Share, go to the Share tab and, holy smokes, we get this insane-- insane, that is, just insane-- link. No one is ever going to type that link. But here's what I do in my seminars-- I saw the guys on the Excel team do this and I said, "This is never going to work," but, holy smokes, it works. I'm going to download this QR code and come back to Excel, we'll Insert a picture. Alright, you're going to think I'm insane but here's what I want you to do: I want you to pull out your cell phone right now-- Oh, shoot unless you're already watching it on a cell phone, but assuming you're watching this on a PC or a tablet-- pull out your cell phone and open the camera and point your camera at the screen. This is absolutely insane that this works. You could be in the back of a large room, I have this up on a PowerPoint slide. Here we are, on a tiny 1280 by 720 video, but when you focus on that barcode with your phone a question's going to pop up that says, "Do you want to open this webpage?" And when you open this webpage, you're going to be taken to that survey that I just created, you answer your three questions and then 24 hours from now-- or actually just moments from now-- we will have the answers to those questions downloaded into this workbook. It is freaking incredible. Well, shoot, I need to show you how incredible is.

So let's go back to the one I created yesterday and put out on Twitter. Here's the responses, 38; average time to complete, 1 minute and 5 seconds; still active, 37 responses to name, last three were "Robert", "Stelios" and "Pierre". Well, Latest Responses down here, if we had numbers we'd-- or the choice--we'd actually be getting a pie chart. This is great in the room, people are doing this live, it is crazy how cool it is, and then it automatically appears here in my Excel sheet. Just like this one, start time, completion time. I didn't ask her to email, name-- didn't ask for that, but then I did ask for your first name-- and what's your favorite tip? So you have all this data in Excel. You can create pivot tables from it, you can do whatever you need to do with it, time and date.

Alright, so go out, answer those three questions, we'll have your Zip code, we'll have your favorite number, we'll come back and-- let's call it the middle of August-- August 15th-- and have a drawing from all the people who entered this, and someone will win that copy of the new book. Forms in Excel, brand new, just showed up in Office 365-- this is insider fast-- yesterday, and it'll be rolling out to everyone in the next couple of months.

Well, hey, that new book, "Excel 2019 Inside Out," you can pre-order it now, to be out in the fall of 2018. Also, hey, you don't realize it, I've been gone for about a month and a half. I pre-recorded all of it-- all those videos up here 2225. I've been working on three new books for Microsoft Press, and before that I recorded a brand new course for the IMA, Institute of Managerial Accountants, called, "Data Analytics Leveraging Excel." That course came out while I was gone. Three and a half NASBA CPE credits if you take the course. I'll put a link down there in the YouTube comments.

Alright, today, Insert Forms appeared in cell recently-- you build a form online at forms.microsoft.com, share the form with a link or with a QR code, and people just take the survey with their phone. It is awesome. To download the workbook from today's video, visit the URL in the YouTube description.

Well, hey, I want to thank you for stopping by. We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.