December 13, 2012|Checkbox Blog, Checkbox Tips & How-To's, News|

New Checkbox users often come from the paper survey world and can’t wait to start transferring their word processor-based (i.e. Microsoft Word) surveys to a shiny new online survey tool. One of the most common mistakes we see these new customers make is not converting their survey content to plain text when copying and pasting it into Checkbox.

Plain text is basically text that has been stripped of formatting (font size, color, style, etc.) and because of this, is more compatible with third party applications like Checkbox. Text with style is called rich, or formatted text. Rich text does not always play nice when pasted into other applications and can sometimes cause appearance and even functionality issues. For this reason, it is generally a best practice to convert content to plain text when cutting and pasting between programs.

Removing style from text can be done directly within Checkbox’s item editor. Here’s how:

1. Add a new item.

In this example we added a Radio Button item.

2. Toggle to the Question tab.

The HTML view will be open by default.

3. Toggle to the Text tab.

Copy the formatted text from you word processor and paste it directly into the text box.

4. Toggle back to the HTML view.

The text will be stripped of style. You can now safely add formatting to your text.