How do I change delimiters while exporting survey data?
When exporting survey responses, you can customize how your data is formatted to match your reporting or import requirements. SurveySensum allows you to choose a delimiter for multi-select answers, and when exporting as CSV, you can also define the cell separation delimiter.
To change the delimiter
- Open the survey whose responses you want to export.
- Navigate to the Report tab.
- Click Export & Import in the top-right corner.
-
Select either Export as Excel or Export as CSV.
- In the export configuration window, click Advanced Settings from the left panel.
-
Under Select Delimiter for multi-select answers, choose how multiple selected options should be separated in the exported file.
-
If you selected Export as CSV, you will also see the Delimiter for cell separation option. Choose how individual columns in the CSV file should be separated.
- Click Export to download the file.
Available delimiters for multi-select answers
You can choose from the following options:
-
Pipe (
|) - New Line
-
Comma (
,) -
Hyphen (
-) - Custom Delimiter
For example, if a respondent selected Email, SMS, and WhatsApp, the exported value could appear as:
-
Pipe:
Email | SMS | WhatsApp -
Comma:
Email, SMS, WhatsApp -
Hyphen:
Email - SMS - WhatsApp New Line:
Email
SMS
WhatsApp-
Custom Delimiter:
Email ~ SMS ~ WhatsApp
Additional options for CSV exports
When exporting as a CSV, you can configure the Delimiter for cell separation, which controls how columns are separated throughout the CSV file.
The available options are:
-
Pipe (
|) -
Comma (
,) -
Hyphen (
-) -
Semicolon (
;)
For example:
-
Comma (
,):John,Doe,New York -
Semicolon (
;):John;Doe;New York -
Pipe (
|):John|Doe|New York -
Hyphen (
-):John-Doe-New York
This setting is separate from the multi-select answer delimiter, allowing you to independently control how multiple answers are displayed within a cell and how columns are separated in the exported CSV file.
Best Practices
- Use Comma as the cell separator for maximum compatibility with spreadsheet applications.
- Use Semicolon if your regional settings use commas as decimal separators.
- Choose Pipe or a Custom Delimiter for multi-select answers to avoid conflicts when response values contain commas.
- Use different delimiters for multi-select answers and cell separation to ensure the exported data is easy to parse and analyze.
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