Imagine sending out surveys that are already personalized for each recipient, or that come with pre-filled information to save time and reduce errors. With PaperSurvey.io's Prefill Forms feature, you can do just that. This powerful tool allows you to dynamically insert data from a spreadsheet directly into your paper surveys, creating a more personalized and efficient data collection process. Take your surveys to the next level by creating dynamic forms that adapt to your spreadsheet data.

1. Displaying Custom Information on Your Survey (Dynamic Text)

You can insert any information from your spreadsheet, such as names, locations, dates, or unique IDs, directly onto the survey form.

Example

In the survey editor, identify where you want to insert custom data. In that spot, type your desired placeholder text surrounded by double curly braces {{...}}. This placeholder will be replaced with the actual data from your spreadsheet.

Let's say you want to personalize a thank-you message. In a Description box, you could write:

[height=2cm]Thank you for visiting {{location_name}} on {{visit_date}}. We value your feedback![/height]

• {{location_name}} will be replaced with the name of the place visited.
• {{visit_date}} will be replaced with the date of the visit.

Upload a spreadsheet with 'location' and 'date' columns using Prefill Forms feature:

ID	Location_Name	Visit_Date
123	XYZ Restaurant	2025-01-01
124	ABC Venue	2027-02-01

The printed survey forms will dynamically replace text (as in image shown above), such as:

• Thanks for visiting the XYZ Restaurant on 2025-01-01. We value your feedback!
• Thanks for visiting the ABC Venue on 2027-02-01. We value your feedback!

Prevent Layout Shifts

When the placeholder text is replaced with real data, the length of the text will vary. A short location name will take up less space than a long one, which can alter your survey's layout and potentially affect the accuracy of checkbox recognition.

To avoid this, you must define a fixed area for your dynamic text using the [height=...] and [width=...] tags. You can use centimeters or inches to define the height/width of the fixed area. Only the [height=...] parameter is mandatory, [width=...] can be useful in some layout configurations.

Example:

[height=3cm][width=10cm]Your prefilled text with {{variable}} goes here.[/width][/height]

This ensures that regardless of the data's length, the fixed area is always 3cm in height and 10cm in width so the remaining layout of your survey remains consistent. If you miss to include [height=...] in your survey, an error will be displayed and you will not be able to create a printable survey version.

2. Link Prefilled Data to Survey Responses for Analysis

Simply displaying data on the form usually isn't enough if you want to use that information to analyze the collected responses. To link the prefilled data to each survey copy, you need to add a special question type.

1. Add the "Prefill Data" question type.

   • For each piece of data you are prefilling and want to use in your analysis (like 'location_name' and 'visit_date' from our example), you need to add a "Prefill Data" question to your survey.

2. Ensure the name matches the column in the spreadsheet. The name you give to this "Prefill Data" question must exactly match the column header in your spreadsheet to be automatically linked.

   • If your spreadsheet column is named location_name, your "Prefill Data" question must also be named location_name.
   • If your spreadsheet column is visit_date, the corresponding "Prefill Data" question must be named visit_date.

3. When the surveys are printed and later scanned, the system will automatically associate the prefilled information with the survey responses based on the unique identifier located at bottom-left corner, allowing you to filter and analyze your results based on this data.

Preparing and Uploading Your Data Spreadsheet

Your spreadsheet (in CSV or Excel format) is the source of all the data that will be prefilled into your surveys.

1. Structure Your Spreadsheet:

• Each row in your spreadsheet will correspond to one or more unique survey copies.
• Each column header should correspond to a placeholder for dynamic text replacement or a "Prefill Data" question in your survey.

2. Upload Your Spreadsheet:

In the Prefill Forms page on papersurvey.io you should create a new dataset and upload a spreadsheet.

3. Printing surveys:

Select rows you would like to print and click "Print". You will be presented with the window below where you can select a survey, number of copies and whether you want to print in two-sided paper or not.

Important Pre-requisite: The "Unique Page Marking" feature must be enabled in your survey's settings. This adds two QR codes to the bottom of each page, which is essential for the prefilling process to work correctly. For single-page surveys, ensure "Uniquely mark single-page surveys" is activated.

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Advanced Settings

There are numerous of advanced settings available that may be useful in some scenarios.

The "Identifier" Column If you have your own unique ID for each survey (for example, from your internal database), you can include an "Identifier" column in your spreadsheet. This allows you to easily match the survey responses back to your existing records, especially when using API to retrieve the data from papersurvey.io

• If you have a unique ID: Ensure each ID is unique and select the column in the Print window.
• If you don't have a unique ID: Simply leave this column out. PaperSurvey.io will automatically generate a unique identifier for each survey copy.
• If unsure, It is best to keep the setting blank as incorrectly configured or non-unique identifier can cause problems.

Number of copies Depending on your survey and distribution plan you may print:

• One Survey Per Row: By default, the system will generate one unique survey for each row in your uploaded spreadsheet.
• Multiple Copies of the Same Prefilled Survey: If you need, for instance, 50 copies of the survey prefilled for "XYZ Restaurant," you can specify the number of copies in the "Copies" field to generate for a single row.
• Variable Number of Copies Per Row: For more advanced needs, you can add a column to your spreadsheet named "Copies". In this column, you can specify how many printed copies should be generated for each corresponding row's data.

Copies per file You can choose the number of copies in a PDF file. For example, if you want 500 copies and set "Copies per file" to 50, you'll get a ZIP file with 10 PDFs, each containing 50 copies. If you leave "Copies per file" blank, all 500 copies will be in one PDF.

Group in Folders If you are planning to print a large number of surveys for ease of organization you may use "Group in Folders" feature to group generated copies to folders. For example, if you select to group by location_name you will receive a ZIP file with two folders namely - 'ABC Venue' and 'XYZ Restaurant'

Prefill Forms for web surveys

You can generate prefilled forms with dynamic variables and linked data for web surveys as well. When you set up your paper survey, you can activate web surveys in its settings page. To generate web survey links, similar to paper surveys, navigate to Prefill Forms, select the desired rows, and click on "Generate links to web survey."