Assuming that you followed all of the above instructions in the proper order, you shouldn't get any errors. However, it is very common to get errors when you are getting your survey to work since it is a complicated procedure. Here are the most common errors and how to deal with them:
As you are importing your data from your text file or from your emails, you may notice that Excel has turned some responses into dates. This usually occurs when you have a short answer question type and are asking for a number in response, such as "How many times per week do you use the campus computer labs?" If someone answers with a single number, such as "5" then the data will be imported correctly. However, if someone answer with a range, such as "4-6" then Excel interprets this as a date (in this case April 6th). It is very difficult to tell Excel that you do not want it to do this. The best solution is to download this workbook (right-click and Save Target As....) and run the macro that I've written to convert these erroneous dates back into ranges. In the example above, the macro will convert the date "April 6th" into the string "4 to 6". The macro will not change any numbers that are correctly formatted.
This error can occur when you click on the Generate Survey button on the Finish tab of the Excel spreadsheet. The most likely cause of this is if you entered your Survey Name on the Basic Settings tab before you enabled the macros on the spreadsheet. The name of the tab associated with your question page (the dark blue one at the bottom) must match the Survey Name that you typed in the Basic Settings tab. When macros are enabled, this happens automatically, but if macros are disabled, they can get out of sync.
To correct this situation, follow these steps:
You might see this error after you click the button at the bottom of the questionnaire page. This means that your results file is not being created, most likely because the permissions on your survey subfolder are not set correctly. Please review and, if necessary, repeat the steps outlined in Step 11 under Creating Your Survey Folder.
If a results file already exists and you are getting this error message, deleting or renaming that text file may correct the problem.
Check to make sure that your survey folder is in the correct location (as a subfolder of "public_html" on Paris). and that the folder name matches the Survey Name that you provided in the Basic Settings tab. (It is case-sensitive.)
Check to make sure that you typed your Bates user id correctly in the Basic Settings tab. (If you make changes on the Basic Settings tab, you will need to regenerate your files and copy the new files from your C: drive to Paris to get things working.)
You might see this error after you click the button at the bottom of the questionnaire page. This error has a number of possible causes:
You might see this error when accessing any page on your survey. This means that you have not enabled your Bates webspace correctly. Please see the following instructions from Bates ILS. (This step was explained in Step 11 under Enabled your personal Bates webspace.)
You might see this error trying to access any page of your survey. Here are some possible causes:
If you are having other errors getting your survey set up, or if the above
solutions are not correcting your problem, please contact Brian Pfohl (bpfohl@bates.edu)
for assistance.
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