Carry forward answers from a Single or Multiple Choice question

Use Carry Forward Answers functionality in your survey to increase authoring efficiency, and maintain consistency between initial and follow-up questions.

Prerequisites:

In the Surveys app, in a survey, create the source and target questions.

The source and target questions must be a supported question type. They must also be on separate pages in the survey, with the source question preceding the target question.

Supported source question types (carry forward answers from) Supported target question types (carry forward answers to)

Depending on the source and target, some question and answer properties may change during the carry forward process. For example, answer images in a Choice question will not be carried forward into the answer labels of Grid question because Grid answers do not support answer images.

  1. Open the target question for editing.
  2. In the edit pane, click the options menu next to the answers, items, columns, or rows, and then select Add Carry Forward Answers.
  3. In the Add Carry Forward Answers dialog, select the Question Source.
    The Question Source menu only lists Single Choice and Multiple Choice questions that precede the current question.
  4. Select the Answer Criteria:
    • Selected answers
    • Unselected answers
    • Shown answers
    • Hidden answers
    • All answers
    Tip: If these options are too broad for your needs, you may need to use masking instead. For more information, see Masking.
  5. Click OK.
    Result:

    The set of answers is added to the question. At the top of the answer set, the condition under which answers are carried forward is displayed. If the target question supports answer images, the answer images are carried forward as well; otherwise, they are removed.

    Note:
    • Grid questions have a limit of 12 columns. Therefore, if the answer set carried forward into Grid columns has more than 12 answers, the operation will fail.
    • "Other, specify" responses cannot be carried forward.
    • Pinned answers do not stay pinned when they are carried forward.
    • For multilingual surveys, each answer set that is carried forward requires translations to be entered in the Translations workspace.
  6. Optional: To remove an answer set, click the options menu beside the condition statement and select Remove.
    Tip:

    You may also be prompted to remove an answer set if the source question is missing or deleted. A missing or deleted source question will result in the answer set not appearing for participants at all.

    To fix the issue, remove the answer set. Try re-creating the source question and the Carry Forward Answer reference. If this is a published survey, you must publish the changes for the answer set to be visible to participants; however, doing so may result in data loss.

  7. Optional: To edit the answer set, click the options menu beside the condition statement and select Edit.

    You can select a new source question and answer criteria option.

  8. Optional: To show or hide a carried forward answer, click the eye icon beside it.
  9. Optional: To carry forward another answer set, repeat steps 2 to 5.
    A target question can contain multiple carry forward answer sets.
    Tip: If you are adding multiple answer sets, check the answers for possible duplicates. You may have to hide the duplicate answer options, create new answer options (representing the merged duplicates), and apply masking to the new answer options.
  10. To update an answer set, click Update below the condition statement.
    Tip:

    You may be prompted to update the answer set if:

    • Source answers were added or removed.
    • Source answer text has changed.
    • Source answer images were added or removed.
    • Source answer order was changed.

    To fix the issue, you must update the answer set. If this is a published survey, you must also publish the changes for the updated answer set to be visible to participants. However, doing so may result in data loss for removed source answers.