"Other" field to enter comments in a form?

blair18356

I am a new user trying to create a survey using a form.  I have multiple dropdown entries which show up as radio button on the form.  Is there any way to have add "Other" to the column and provide the ability to add a comment.

I searched the "Help" and "Community" and could not find this question addressed.

Thanks.

 

L_123

It might help if you add a picture of what you are talking about. That said there are 3 special columns all the way to the left. One of them is a row comment column that you cannot delete, but can hide, if you right click at the column headers and select unhide all columns, it will definitely be there. But you can always add row comments from there.

If you want to simply add another row to the parent child relationship, then right click the row header and add the new row. You can use tab to add the new child to the parent if it doesn't automatically do it.

I'm not sure I answered your question though. If you go into more detail I'm sure either I or someone else will be able to answer it.

Mike Wilday

Hi Blair, 

There are some limitations when it comes to using the Smartsheet web forms. This is definitely one of them. While this functionality is not inherently in Smartsheets itself there are some things you could to do to workaround the missing feature. 

The easiest step would be to adjust your dropdown to say "Other: Please add comment" and then add an additional column for capturing comments for your question. This could add Qualitative data to your survey. 

Another option would be to use Google integration to have Google Forms populate your smartsheet allowing for smarter form creation. 

See here for more information: https://www.smartsheet.com/apps/google-forms-smartsheet-sync

Matt Stofka

Hi, Blair.

If you search for "conditional forms" in the Community you'll see several discussions about the need for conditional logic in web forms.

I also have the need to present certain columns on the form only when specific values are selected from other columns, including the "other" scenario you described.

What I do now is to just add a column to the sheet called Other, then place it on the form as an optional field after the drop-down list column containing the OTHER value, and then I add help text saying something like "If you selected OTHER above, please describe here".

You could also make this Other field required and instruct them in the help text to put "N/A" if it's not applicable, but that may be annoying for the bulk of people who won't need to select the OTHER value.

That's certainly not perfect, but there's currently no other way to do this until SS adds conditional functionality to the forms.

I'd recommend submitting this product enhancement request...the more requests they get for a particular feature, the greater the likelihood that it'll get on the roadmap (If it's not already): https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form?EQBCT=739aa75f30ca43a8a22eb53e4da7d409

Matt