Survey Sample Form for Microsoft Outlook

This Microsoft Outlook sample message form by Scott Bradley makes it easy to create surveys. Instead of building a new form every time you want to conduct a survey, you can use this generic form to create many different types of surveys. It supports five different types of questions:

• Simple text
• Yes/No
• Five-level agree scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree
• 1 to 10 (user enters a number)
• Multiple choice (up to five choices)

When the user receives the survey, the form uses a wizard-like format to display the questions one at a time and allow the user to go back and change answers. The form returns responses to the sender in both Q&A and comma-delimited formats and then deletes the survey item.

Prerequisite

To use this form, you must be able to publish it to the Organizational Forms library on the in-house Exchange Server. It cannot be used to collect data from recipients outside your organization.

Setup

1. Download the Survey.zip file (13.6 kb), then extract the Osurvey.oft file that it contains.
2. In Outlook, choose Tools | Forms | Choose Form.
3. At the top of the Choose Form dialog, select User Templates in File System.
4. Navigate to the folder that you used in Step 1 to extract the Osurvey.oft file.
5. Click Open.
6. Publish the form to the Organization Forms library so that every one in your organization can use it. Do NOT check the Send form definition with item box on the (Properties) page of the form.

Usage

To create a survey, use the Tools | Forms | Choose Form command to launch the Survey form, then follow these steps:

1. Enter the recipients in the To box and subject in the Title box.
2. Pick a question type from the Type box.
3. Type the text of the question in the Question box. 
4. Click Add.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 for the remaining questions.
6. Adjust the question order with the Move Up and Move Down buttons. 
7. If you do not want the results to include a comma-delimited list of the answers, clear the Format Response in CSV format box.
8. Click Send to transmit the survey message.

The user receiving the survey must open it to answer it and will see the first question with a place to provide the answer (the exact control depends on the type of question), plus Next, Back and Finish buttons, as in a wizard. When the user clicks Finish, the form creates a reply to the survey sender and compiles the responses into the body of the reply message, in Q&A format. If the Format Response in CSV format box was checked by the survey sender, the responses will also be sent in comma-delimited format.  

You can create a report on the survey result messages with this sample code: Survey Response Accumulation-Reporting.

How It Works

Take a look at the Read layout for the form to get a better idea of how it works. All the necessary controls for showing the questions are present. The form code simply displays the appropriate control for each question and hides the others. 

The number of questions is stored in the Mileage field and the question type and text in the Body of the survey form message.

Notes

Because of the way the form's code populates the necessary controls when it opens, you cannot create a new survey with this form, then save it in Drafts for transmission. You also cannot resend a survey form item the Sent Items folder. You must create a fresh survey every time from the published form.