How to Create a Word Survey
KEVIN LEE
TECH
Start with some questions, add a few tables, toss in some check boxes and you’ve got the ingredients of a professional-looking survey. While Microsoft Word isn’t a full-featured desktop publishing program, it does have a few tools that can help you design formatted documents. A typical survey consists of multiple questions to answer. Participants can provide answers by clicking check boxes next to answer choices that appear below the questions. Learn to create multiple tables in Word and you can produce a high-quality survey that you can print, post on a website or email to others.
- Build a Check Box Survey
- Create a new Word document
- Click directly below the question
- Click
- Click the column
- Move to the column
- Position your cursor below the first table
- Use Radio Buttons
- Create a table that has two columns
- Click inside the second column
- Position
- Repeat these steps
- Insert another table
1 Build a Check Box Survey
2 Create a new Word document
Create a new Word document and right-click the ribbon. Click "Customize the Ribbon" and put a check mark in the "Developer" check box. Click "OK" to add the Developer tab to the ribbon. Type your first survey question in the location where you want to begin the survey. A typical survey question might be, "How well did you enjoy the show?"
3 Click directly below the question
Click directly below the question and then click "Insert." Click "Table" followed by "Insert Table." Type "2" in the "Number of Columns" text box and type the number of answer choices that belong to your first question in the “Rows” text box. For example, if your first question is "How well did you enjoy the show?" your choices might be "I loved it!" "I liked it a lot," "It was okay" and "Not at all." Those are examples of the type of choices you might find for a survey question. Click "OK" to create your table.
4 Click
Click inside the first column in the table's first row and then click the "Developer" tab. You'll see a check box control in the ribbon's Controls section. Click the check box control to add it to the first column in the table's first row. Click inside the first column in table's second row and press "Ctrl-Y." Word adds a check box to that column. Repeat this process for each row in the table. When you're done, a check box will exist in the first column of each row.
5 Click the column
Click the column to the right of the first row's check box and type the survey question's first answer choice. For instance, if the first question is "How well did you enjoy the show?" the first choice might be "I loved it!"
6 Move to the column
Move to the column below the one that contains the text you entered and type the text for your second answer choice. That choice could be, "It was okay." Repeat this process to add the remaining choices to the remaining rows. When you're finished, you'll have one survey question that sits above answer choices for that question. Check boxes sit to the left of each answer choice.
7 Position your cursor below the first table
Position your cursor below the first table, press "Enter" and type the survey's second question. Repeat the steps described previously to create another table that holds the choices and check boxes for the second question. Continue this table creation process until you've added all your questions to the survey.
8 Use Radio Buttons
9 Create a table that has two columns
Create a table that has two columns, as described in the previous section. Type a statement, such as “I liked the software,” in the table’s first column.
10 Click inside the second column
Click inside the second column, click the Legacy Tools button and then click "Option Button" to add a radio button to the column. Right-click that button, click “OptionButton Object” and then click “Edit.” Replace the exisiting default text with your own choice. For example, if your statement is “I liked the software,” one choice might be “I loved it!”
11 Position
Position the cursor to the right of the text you typed and press "Ctrl-Y" to add a second radio button next to the first one. Replace the second radio button’s default text with your second choice.
12 Repeat these steps
Repeat these steps to add additional radio buttons as needed to the right of the previous two radio buttons. When you're done, your first table will contain the survey's first item. That item consists of a statement in column one and several possible answer choices in column two.
13 Insert another table
Insert another table below the first one and use these steps to complete your survey's second item. Add additional tables below this one as needed to finish the survey.
- Your tables have visible grid lines by default. You may prefer to keep those visible, or you might like to hide them instead. Hide a table's grid lines by right-clicking inside the table and clicking "Table Properties" to open the Table Properties window. Click "Borders and Shading, click "None" and then click "OK" twice. Word removes the borders from the table.
- Don't worry if your answer choices get too long. Because those choices reside in a table column, text wraps neatly if a choice's length exceeds the column's width.
- Instead of creating tables individually, you could create one table, populate it with check boxes and copy that table. Do that by right-clicking the small box that appears above a table’s upper-left corner and selecting “Copy.” Right-click below the table and press “Ctrl-V” to paste a copy of that table in that location. If you need to add an additional row to that table, move your cursor to the table’s lower-left corner and click the Insert Control that appears; it looks like a plus sign.
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