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Export Messages doesn't work properly

 
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lowellhcoxnet



Joined: 31 Oct 2017
Posts: 5

PostPosted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 6:48 pm    Post subject: Export Messages doesn't work properly Reply with quote

The email reports are accurate, but when I use the Export Messages feature (Excel file, WORD file, etc), those summaries are hosed up. I have 5 questions in my form (Vote 2017), if any one question is left blank, the input data for the following question is moved up in it's place. Plus, the Export Messages feature is not handling quote marks properly in a name, extra spaces get thrown in. Plus, the Export Messages feature is truncating some names.

This form has 3 drop down boxes and 2 text fields.

User Name: lowellhcoxnet
Form Name: Vote 2017
Web Location: http://www.azblueshof.com/Vote-2017-3.html
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mycontac
Site Admin


Joined: 31 Dec 2003
Posts: 2860

PostPosted: Mon Dec 18, 2017 3:45 am    Post subject: Reply Reply with quote

Good Day,

If the form was created, messages were received, and then the form was tweaked, this can sometimes interfere with the question ordering.

I'd suggest either deleting out the messages from the message center for this particular form and the exporting fresh, or recreating the form.

Nick Ladd
myContactForm.com
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lowellhcoxnet



Joined: 31 Oct 2017
Posts: 5

PostPosted: Mon Dec 18, 2017 10:17 am    Post subject: Reply Reply with quote

Hi Nick

Thanks for the fast response, but I don’t believe you have provided a solution to the problem, which to me doesn’t seem like a problem that I can correct on my end. I’m not sure what you mean by “If the form was created, messages were received, and then the form was tweaked…” I initialy created the form on 11-27-17, did some tweaking of the form, ran some test cases where I received back emails and had the form finalized by 12-16-17. I didn’t export my first spreadsheet until 12-17-17 (after the form was finalized (all the tweaking was done) and being used). Are the emails considered as “emails received,” or just the spreadsheets (in my case)?

As you suggested I did "go into the message center for this particular form” and deleted out all the earlier email test cases before finalizing the form. I didn’t delete the messages after the form was finalizing (and people acutally started voting) as I was afraid I would then have no data to export in a spreadsheet format. I did recreate the spreadsheet with just the remaining data, but sitll have the same problems with the question order getting messed up, the problem with the quotes in the names and the truncating of the names.

I do not feel at this time that I want to recreate the form because (1) The form is currently being used by the ABHOF community for voting in new members for the Hall of Fame and (2) recreating the form is going to give me the exact same HTML as with my first form.

And remember, my post is about 3 problems, not just the problem with the answers to the questions being put in the wrong place. To repeat, the 3 problems are as follows:

(1) Entering no data for any question causes the data for the following question to be moved up.
(2) The Exporting feature (spreadsheet, WORD files, etc.) is not handling quote marks in a person’s name properly
(3) The Exporting feature (spreadsheet, WORD files, etc.) is truncating some names.

And again, the data in the emails we received are fine, it's just the data in the exported spreadsheet that is in error.

I still need help. Thanks.
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lowellhcoxnet



Joined: 31 Oct 2017
Posts: 5

PostPosted: Mon Dec 18, 2017 6:42 pm    Post subject: Reply correction Reply with quote

I had a typo in my above reply, I meant to ask "Are the emails considered as “messages received,” or just the spreadsheets (in my case)? "
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mycontac
Site Admin


Joined: 31 Dec 2003
Posts: 2860

PostPosted: Wed Dec 20, 2017 5:34 am    Post subject: Reply Reply with quote

Good Day,

The problem is that if old data is in the database that does not represent the current form configuration, it essentially can shift and move columns around on the export.

For example, say the third question on your form is called 'Name' on day 1. Once form submissions come in, the data would fall into the C column in the Excel spread sheet.

On day 2, say you decide to add a new question called 'Phone Number' and place it third spot on the form pushing 'Name' to the fourth slot.

When exporting to Excel, the data collected on day 1 for 'Name' would still fall in Column C, but the column header would say 'Phone Number'. The data in Column C would contain the appropriate phone numbers from day 2 onward.

You can see if you start adding, deleting, moving fields around once data is collected, things can get very shuffled. This is why I'd recommend either starting a new form when changes need to be made, or purging out old data that was collected before the changes.

I hope this is clear and can help figure out the problems.

Nick Ladd
myContactForm.com

'Name' that when the form was created is in the 'C' column of excel. Say, the questions change and now the third question on the form is changed, the data fr
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lowellhcoxnet



Joined: 31 Oct 2017
Posts: 5

PostPosted: Wed Dec 20, 2017 9:38 am    Post subject: Reply correction Reply with quote

Hello Nick

I thank you for trying to address my problem, I really do, but it appears to me you are not understanding what my problems are. None of your comments “clear and figure out the problems” as you wrote. Is there antoher Site Administrator you can turn this issue over to? If so...

To the new Site Administrator, First of all, I have 3 problems, not just one problem and I have asked about all 3 in all my posts and only one of these 3 problems has been addressed (which is the most important of the three, but still just one of there).

None of the comments listed in the above Reply address my problems. For example, I do NOT have “old data is in the database that does not represent the current form configuration”. There has been no “adding, deleting, moving fields around once data is collected”. These comments may be valid to some other problem, but they are not relevant for my problems. To verify, the very first test case I ran after creating the form shows the same exact question order as the final version of the form. The current form configuration is the same as when it was first created.

As I have stated, my form is currently in use by the ABHOF community, I have purged out all old data that was used only in test cases, but as I also stated I can’t purged out ALL the data as I still need the actual voting data to export to the spreadsheet. And I certainly don’t want to create a new form right in the middle of people voting, especially since I would end up with exactly the same HTML to pasted into my form.

Please, if there is another Site Administrator that can address this issue, would you please help out? Time is of the essence, as the voting for this form ends 12-30-17, I’ve already lost 3 days in trying to get these 3 problems fixed.

If a new Site Administrator is not available, I do have a work-around. The email reports we are receiving are valid (no problems there), so I can manually created my own spreadsheet by entering data from the emails by into a spreadsheet, but I don’t feel like I’m getting what I paid for since I can’t use the mycontactform exported spreadsheet feature. The problem seems to me to be a problem with the mycontactform computer code, not due to anything I've done incorrectly.

Thanks,

User Name: lowellhcoxnet
Form Name: Vote 2017
Web Location: http://www.azblueshof.com/Vote-2017-3.html
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mycontac
Site Admin


Joined: 31 Dec 2003
Posts: 2860

PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:02 am    Post subject: Reply Reply with quote

I realize there are three questions, but they are all tied to the same issue -- the data going into the database is corrupted.

Looking at the myContactForm.com code on you site, you have a series of hard returns in the hidden subject field (line breaks) that are likely going into the database and jamming things up on the export (Excel is likely interpreting as weird content). This is not present in the code as we've provided it, but perhaps were added by your authoring software.

When you look at the source, it looks like this at line 234-235, find the code that look like this:

Code:
<input name="subject" id="subject" value="2017
Nominations" type="hidden"></td>


Get rid of the hard return between '2017' and 'Nominations' so it looks like this:

Code:
<input name="subject" id="subject" value="2017 Nominations" type="hidden"></td>


This should hopefully solve the issue for new submissions, although I would still export all the submissions up to now, save them, and then purge them from the message center, as they will still likely jumble up the export.

Nick Ladd
myContactForm.com
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lowellhcoxnet



Joined: 31 Oct 2017
Posts: 5

PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:16 pm    Post subject: Reply Reply with quote

Nick

Thanks for your prompt replay and time spent on this matter, I do appreciate it. But the code you show in your example is not in the form in question (form "Vote 2017”). That code is from our previous form (form "2017 ABHOF Nominations"). That code did not cause any problems in the 2017 ABHOF Nominations form. And in that form we had lots of nominations where people left blanks for questions (which seems to be causing us problems in the current “Vote 2017” form).

We do have a similar code in the “Vote 2017” form, it is as follows:

Code:
<input name="subject" id="subject" value=“2017
Vote" type="hidden"></td><


I do understand your comment about the hard return, so I removed it from the above code so that that line now looks like the following:

Code:
type="hidden"><input name="formid" id="formid" value="442901" type="hidden"><input name="subject" id="subject" value="2017 Vote" type="hidden"></td>


i updated everything, ran two new test cases, and the two new submissions are also jumbled up in the spreadsheet export feature.

And it’s not just the spreadsheet that gets jumbled up, it’s also the tab and comma delimited text files, the WORD files, the HTML files and the PDF files.

There are some hard returns that may be causing some extra spaces being put in some names (e.g., Mikel Lander and Meredith Moore is being exported as Mikel Lander and "with 21 extra spaces" Meredith Moore, but when I remove these hard returns using my software they pop right back in. This is true for some names with quotes, (e.g. David "Yahni" Riley Jr. gets exported as David "with 21 extra spaces" "Yahni" Riley Jr.) But with or without quotes in a name, I guess this is the same problem, i.e., extra spaces exported in long names.

But I don’t see any hard returns that would account for names getting truncated (e.g., Jim Robertson gets exported as Jim Robertso), the last letter was dropped. In the name Eric Ramsey, in some cases the last letter y was dropped, but not in all cases.

At this time since the data is being handle properly in the myContactForm emails (and I know very little about fixing HTML problems), I’m going to drop my request to resolve this export problem. Our go-forward plan will be to use just the email data and we will create our own spreadsheet.

Thanks anyway,

User Name: lowellhcoxnet
Form Name: Vote 2017
Web Location: http://www.azblueshof.com/Vote-2017-3.html
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