Populate a drop down from a list (excel, csv, etc)

Hello,

I need to populate a dropdown list with options from an external file like a csv or excel sheet. I will have 100+ employees and I expect that total number to continue to both grow as well as have the need to remove some employees.

Is there a way to do this?

All of the similar questions and answers I've found in your knowledge base generally refer back to using the "Spreadsheet to Form Widget" which is not suitable in this case.

Specifically, I need to maintain a list of employees in this select list. Then if I need to add/remove employees from this list, I would want to upload a new list that would then be reflected in the dropdown as options.

Make sense?

Thank you,

Hi,

Here is guide on how to spreadsheet to form widget.

https://www.jotform.com/help/442-how-to-use-the-spreadsheet-to-form-widget/

Hope this helps.

Hi Mark,

Thank you for the reply. However, from this article, it seems this widget is not appropriate for this use case.

I need to pre-populate a dropdown with options from a list that a user can then select from. I don't want to fill out the entire form. It would be almost the same functionality as a dropdown full of state names, but instead, I need to fill it with our employee names.

Then, the rest of the form will be filled out by the user, NOT with data from the source file.

Does that make sense?

Hi, Thanks for the additional information.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to populate dropdown data from any external source. You would have to manually add the data in the options in the drop-down of form. Your drop-down would require its options to be specified when building. You can't create a dropdown any other way. For example, if you have three choices for your dropdown: A, B, and C. You must specify them when building. Then you can select A, B, or C either by prepopulating, populating the data from a spreadsheet, or manually.

I would also suggest you to please take a look at our "Spreadsheet to Form" widget and see if that fits into your requirements. This will allow you to upload all the data in an excel file with a unique column. When a user inputs unique data in the widget, the respective data form excel file will be fetched and populated in the form fields.

Please take a look at the following guide which should help you: https://www.jotform.com/help/442-How-to-Use-the-Spreadsheet-to-Form-Widget

I hope that explains it. Please contact us again if we can help in any way.