If you have a Multiple Textboxes question that you want to pipe default answers into, it may seem on first viewing that it’s not possible.
This guide explains how to do it using a little bit of extra syntax.
Put simply, you need to do two things:
Firstly, before the piping tag , add “rown:” where n is the number of the row you wish to pipe into (the first row is row1 and so on). Secondly, after the piping tag, insert two vertical-pipe characters (||) to separate each row you wish to pipe into.
Below is a step-by-step example for this sort of question. For the example, we’ll assume that the data to be piped is a contact name, and two pieces of information from custom columns.
- Create a question with the type Multiple Textboxes
- Add the names for the text boxes as the answer choices
- Scroll to the bottom of the popup box and click on Question Size and Positioning to access the extra options
- In the Default Answer box, Type “row1:”
- Use the insert piping link next to the box to insert the piping for your first text box
- Type “||row2:”
- Then insert the relevant piping for the second text box
- Type “||row3:”
- Then insert the relevant piping for the third text box
- Repeat the process for as many rows as you need to pipe in default answer data
You should end up with the contents of the box looking like this:
row1:[contact(name)]||row2:[contact(column1)]||row3:[contact(column2)]
Doing this has the advantage of allowing respondents to update multi-row data (such as an address, which might be house number, street, district, town, county, postcode) in a single question instead of having to split it out across multiple questions.