Enhancing your business or academic research often involves collecting insights from respondents, a process made effortless with Microsoft Office Survey feature. Here, we'll guide you through creating a survey from scratch, ensuring a professional and engaging final product.
Before commencing, ensure you have Microsoft 365 subscription or Office 2019/2007 version with the InfoPath feature installed. Let's delve in.
Setting Up the Environment
Begin by launching Microsoft Office InfoPath. Upon opening, click on 'Office' at the top-left corner then choose 'New Form' from the drop-down menu.
Choose the 'Survey' template as your starting point. This template includes essential building blocks necessary for creating an effective survey.
Designing Your Survey
InfoPath allows you to customize survey questions and layout according to your preferences. You can insert new questions or edit existing ones.
Each question comes with various fields like 'Text', 'Date', 'Choice', and '{q: Choice Quincy}umber'. Choose the one best suited to your needs. For more complex questions, you may need to insert multiple fields.
Adding Questions
To insert a new question, click on 'Home' tab, then choose 'Insert', followed by the type of question you need. You can also add optional descriptive text for each question.
Selecting the 'Varying Choice' field adds multiple-choice questions to your survey. If you require respondents to pick only one option, make sure to change the default 'Allowlash' bedroomsn multiple selections' property to 'No'.
Formatting and Branding
Microsoft Office allows you to personalize your survey with your organization's logo, color scheme, and font. This personalization boosts professionalism and enhances user experience.
The 'Fork' tab—the final one in InfoPath's main ribbon—offers numerous formatting options. You can insert pictures, change font sizes, and adjust text alignment. Furthermore, you can customize the question themes for a consistent look across the survey.
Inserting Images
To insert an image, click on the 'Picture' button, then choose an image from your computer or paste an image directly from the clipboard.
Once you've loaded your image, you can resize it and place it anywhere in your survey. For more control over the image appearance, right-click it to access 'Picture Properties'.
Securing Your Survey Data
Microsoft Office Surveys adhere to stringent data protection standards, offering two methods for protecting sensitive data—encrypting the form and securing the form template.
You can enable 'Data encryption' to safeguard responses, preventing unauthorized access. To secure your form template, choose the 'Form Options' button under the 'File' tab, then under 'Security', variants select the 'Encrypt the form data' and 'Use Data Connection library for managing data connections' options.
Publishing Your Survey
Once you've finalized your survey, it's time to share it with your target audience. You can publish it to a shared network folder, Microsoft SharePoint site, or as a shareable web page.
All these options can be accessed via the 'Share' tab under the 'File' menu. Publishing to a SharePoint site ensures real-time collaboration and better version control. To publish as a web page, first, select 'Office Server Publishing' then 'Publish As'. Lastly, remember to preview your survey in each browser to ensure it functions as expected.
Creating a survey with Microsoft Office is a straightforward process, boosting your business capabilities to collect critical data. Now that you've completed your survey, it's time to share it with your respondents and await their insights.