Data Entry from Form- How to separate data into rows for easy sorting?

  • IceMelt
    Asked on January 18, 2016 at 8:07 PM

    I am working on this form here: https://form.jotform.com/60177084526154

    This is a fundraising contest form that will allow people to purchase 1, 5 or 30 "guesses" where they guess the time that a clock drops into a frozen over lake (when the ice melts, the clock falls into the lake and stops). The winner is the person with the closest time guess prediction to when the clock actually drops each spring when the ice melts.

    I am setting up a JotForm payment form to take these "guesses" and payment, but I'm running into a hitch.

    I am using a Widget to setup 1, 5 and 30 "rows" of fields for guesses that are shown upon a selection of the Radio Buttons using conditional logic. However, this doesn't seem to work for my needs as all of the "guess" data is getting entered into one cell in the CSV download, so there isn't a way to "sort" the data by the guessed "date/time", see below example:

    Data Entry from Form  How to separate data into rows for easy sorting? Image 1 Screenshot 40

    Below is an example of how ideally the CSV database SHOULD be from submitting this JotForm: We'd like each “guess” row to be broken out into separate rows in the CSV file so that our staff can easily sort the database to find the closest guessed time to determine a winner. The way this one is setup is that it has the date/hour/minute/second/high temp broken out into their own columns, but really the date and/or minute/second could all be in column, and the high temp could be in a separate column so they can easily sort by date/time. Anyway, it doesn't have to be exactly as we have it in our old database below where we used military times, but it has to be possible that each "guess" can be separated out somehow so our staff can easily sort by date/time to determine the winner.

     

    Data Entry from Form  How to separate data into rows for easy sorting? Image 2 Screenshot 51

    So, for example, if Joe Smith chooses 5 entries, the database will be arranged with his name in five rows, with each "guess" time in it's own row for easy sorting in Excel (date/hour/minute/second & high temp).

    I may not be able to use the Widget I'm using for this, so any advice is helpful. I'd love to find a developer to help me develop this form as I'm a JotForm novice and am having trouble getting this setup as desired.

    See screenshot of Widget I'm using below for the Guess data entry:

    Data Entry from Form  How to separate data into rows for easy sorting? Image 3 Screenshot 62

  • Chriistian Jotform Support
    Replied on January 19, 2016 at 4:12 AM

    Hi,

     

    Unfortunately the form would have to be submitted multiple times if you want the time to be displayed in another row when viewed in the CSV. You can use individual fields to display the time in separate columns when a user submits once. However if you prefer to see the time in a new row instead, they will have to fill out a form for every entry that they have.

     

    Regards.

  • IceMelt
    Replied on January 19, 2016 at 10:14 AM

    Thanks, do you guys have any developers that could help me get this form working as desired? I guess it doesn't necessarily have to be in different rows, the guesses could go into columns so that they can somehow sort the times to determine a winner... but I don't think I can do this with the Configurable List Widget?

    This is trickier than I had thought! Any suggestions on how the data can be separated and sorted for easy picking of a winner?

  • Welvin Support Team Lead
    Replied on January 19, 2016 at 12:41 PM

    We can request this to our developers if you wish, but we don't know if they will be working on this right away or if they will consider doing this in the widget.

    A workaround, for now, would be to split the data manually. This guide will help you: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Split-text-into-different-cells-30b14928-5550-41f5-97ca-7a3e9c363ed7

    Or, modify your form and use individual Date and Time and Textbox fields. You can align them into three columns using our field positioning feature:

    http://www.jotform.com/help/90-Form-Field-Positioning

    Then you can show/hide the fields by group:

    http://www.jotform.com/help/297-Show-or-Hide-multiple-fields-at-once-using-form-collapse-tool

    Let us know if you need help with this method.