A Text Area question, like the Text Field question, provides a spacious text area for the user to enter text as an answer. Breaks or carriage returns are allowed for text areas.

Access Edit Questions Interface

The first thing you need to do in order to create questions for your survey is to access it through the Survey Editor. Click on the Survey Editor tab:

From the Choose a Survey portion of the Survey Editor interface, find your survey from the Select Survey drop down menu. Then, click the Edit Question button.

You will then receive the Edit Questions interface.

At the top of the page will be the name of the survey and a current list of questions for this survey.

Below the Questions list, you will find a form that can be used to add a new question.

Create Text Area Question

In order to add a Text Area question to your survey, fill out the following fields in the Add/Modify a Question portion of the interface:

• Interface: The Basic interface is strongly recommended; it gives you the quickest access to the most important details of survey creation. The Advanced interface not only allows you to stylize certain aspects of your survey, but it also allows you control distribution and publicity of your survey’s results. For more information about this please contact either Dale David or Debbie Faires.
  
  For this tutorial, we shall use the Basic interface (highlighted in red in the top-right portion of the image below).
   
• Question: Type in the text of your Text Area question
   
• Type: Make sure Text Area is selected from the drop down menu
   
• Required?: If this field is set to Yes, the user completing the survey will be forced to supply a valid answer for this question before they can move on to the next page or submit the survey. If you wish to make a certain question optional, simply set the Required? field for that question to No.
   
• Display in Summary?: On the survey results page, after selecting a survey, you will be presented with a list of all completed surveys submitted so far. Included in this list will be the date and time of submissions as well as either the IP or Email address of the user who completed the survey.
  
  Setting the Display in Summary? field to Yes for an individual question will cause the answer to that question to appear in the list of completed surveys. Since each survey in the list appears on one line, you should be selective about which questions you have displayed in the summary so that you do not run out of room.
  
  For this tutorial, we are setting the Display in Summary? to No.

Click Add Question button

Click on the Add Question button to add this question to your survey.

Upon clicking the Add Question button, the Text Area question will be added to the Questions list for your survey.

To preview your question, click on the question in the Questions list and click the Preview button below the Questions box:

Your Text Area question will then open in a separate browser window:

Modify Text Area Question

To modify the text and parameters of your Text Area question, click on your question, which is located in your List of Questions. From there, click the Edit button:

Modifiable Fields
Select which fields you want to modify in the Add/Modify a Question portion of the interface:

• Question: Type in the revised text of your Radio Button question
   
• Type: When modifying a question, do not change the question type. It is best to simply create a new question.
   
• Required?: If this field is set to Yes, the user completing the survey will be forced to supply a valid answer for this question before they can move on to the next page or submit the survey. If you wish to make a certain question optional, simply set the Required? field for that question to No.
   
• Display in Summary?: On the survey results page, after selecting a survey, you will be presented with a list of all completed surveys submitted so far. Included in this list will be the date and time of submissions as well as either the IP or Email address of the user who completed the survey.
  
  Setting the Display in Summary? field to Yes for an individual question will cause the answer to that question to appear in the list of completed surveys. Since each survey in the list appears on one line, you should be selective about which questions you have displayed in the summary so that you do not run out of room.

Click Modify Question button

Click the Modify Question button to enable your question modifications.

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