Exporting responses

The Export menu

On any Responses view, Export in the top right opens a menu. Its first group is headed Current filters, and the options in it respect whatever date range, status and answer filters you have applied.

By default an export contains submitted responses only. Choose Completed and partial in the filter bar first if you want drafts as well.

Viewers can export, because export needs only read access.

What is in the file

CSV and Excel start with nine fixed columns:

Response ID, Status, Submitted at, Duration (s), Score, Max score, Email, Device, Source.

Then comes one column per question, for every question that has appeared in any published version, and finally a column named Hidden: name for each hidden field. Two questions with the same title get a number added to the second one, such as "Comments (2)".

Answers are written the way you would read them. Choices show their labels, multiple selections are joined, grids read "Row: picks", dates and times are plain text, and number-like answers stay numbers so sums work. Uploaded files are listed by name.

The Source column shows the referring site, or the campaign source when there is no referrer.

CSV

The file is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark so Excel opens accents correctly. Any cell that starts with =, +, -, @, a tab or a carriage return gets an apostrophe in front. That stops a spreadsheet from running an answer as a formula, which matters because respondents type what they like.

Excel

The Responses sheet has bold headings and sensible column widths. The Summary sheet gives the form title, when it was exported, the number of responses, and the counts and percentages for each option of every choice question. A sheet holds up to 1,048,576 rows, and Formwork stops with a message to filter by date or use CSV when a form is larger.

JSON

The JSON file has four parts: the form (id, title, export time), every published versions entry, the questions with ids, types and options, and the responses. Each response carries its answers as machine-readable values keyed by question id, plus labels with the human text, along with status, version, times, score, email, starred, tags, note and the meta block of device, source and campaign.

Files

All uploaded files (ZIP) puts each file in a folder named for its response, for example response-146/, with the file's id in front of its name. One download can hold up to 1 GB. If a form has no uploaded files it says so.

Email me this export

This button queues a CSV export and emails you a link when it is ready. The link is valid for 7 days and works only while you are signed in as yourself. It suits large forms, because you do not have to wait on the page.

Scheduled exports

Owners and editors see a Schedule button next to Export. It offers Off, Every day and Every week. Formwork then builds a CSV of all responses and emails a link, valid for 7 days, to the workspace owner. Turning a schedule on sends nothing right away; the first export comes one period later.

Scheduled exports are a plan feature.

Limits and plans

Whole-form exports are rate limited to 20 per five minutes for each person and form, and the address is limited too. CSV is available on every plan. Excel, JSON and the files ZIP need the plan's full export formats. See Default plan limits.

Getting data out another way

To pull responses into another system automatically, use webhooks or the API instead of repeated downloads. See Webhooks and Forms and responses endpoints.