Dynamic Page Logic — Showing/Hiding Questions Based On User Choices
This tutorial shows you how to dynamically hide or show a question on a page based on another question on the same page. (This feature does not work across multiple pages.)
This is a great way to make your survey appear as short as possible — which is a key factor in obtaining more responses.
Step 1: Create a survey page
Create your survey page with all the questions you want to ask. This includes both the hidden and visible questions.
Step 2: Choose a “trigger” question
Click the edit icon for your “trigger” question (the question that decides what other questions should be shown). A trigger question must be a Radio or Checkbox question.
In the editor next to each answer choice, you’ll see a “Show/Hide Triggers” column, shown in the image below. Double-Click the icon next to the choice that will drive your show/hide action.
A blue box will appear that shows all the other questions on this page. Simply check the question that you want to appear and “close” the toolbox. (Shown below)
Save the changes you made to this question, which will return you to the survey editor.
Step 3: Edit the “target” question
Click the edit icon for your “target” question(s) (the question that should be hidden by default).
Under the “Advanced formatting” toolbar, you’ll see a section called “Dynamic Control”. Check the box that says “This question will not appear on the page unless toggled by another question.” Save your changes to this question.
That’s all there is to it.
24 Comments
Adam - I looked into this and you were doing everything correctly. A bug in the code stopped the questions from hiding again if the respondant changed their selection.
So I (long story, short) fixed the bug. It will work for you now! :)
Under advanced, you have an option Show When that states:
Show When
Will auto-hide by default.
Set “equals” to “*” to show for any non-blank response.
The last statement implies that you can trigger the appearance of a question if a textbox element is non-blank. When I tried this, the question remained hidden. There is no trigger question option for text boxes. It would be nice if you could trigger a series of questions if a user provides any answer at all in a text box.
I have the free version of the software. I am trying to use show/hide trigger action.
1. Does this action is acted upon only when you launch the survey?
2. I have my two questions set. I have set question A (”Yes/No” under show/hide option to show the appropriate quesion (B). For the question B, under advanced editing I have set the question to show when question A is set to Yes. When I preview the survey and click on “Yes” nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Nita,
The action will occur both in Preview and Live modes
Your second problem is actually that you are doing too much ;) If you remove your Show-When rule on question B everything should work fine. Just check off the option that says “hide this question until toggled on by another question on this page”.
The “Show When” rules are really a form of page logic, and shouldn’t be used when both of your questions are on the same page!
I hope this helps
Cheers,
-Christian
Thank yo uvery much Christian for the quick response. It is working fine after I removed the rule. I went overboard uhh… :)
Is it possible to have same Show/Hide question for multiple trigger questions.
I have a questions with multiple answers. I cannot do matrix because I have 9 check boxes and then the other box. So I am trying to use show/hide question and use it to multiple questions. I did make copies of the same question as I realized that I need to have the show/hide question for each trigger question.
Hi Nita,
Not easily. If you want to do that you really need to split the survey up into a few pages and the Page Logic action or Advanced Show When rules.
-Christian
Christian,
In Q2 of my survey I have a long check-box list of services a respondent could use. Respondents can check all that apply. I have included Other:Specify, Don’t Know, and None choices. If a user selects none, I want all other choices to grey out. I selected the Show/Hide icon, and it tells me that there are no other questions on this page and to use advanced logic. How can I edit so if the user selects “None of the Above”, any other choices are not accepted. If they UNCHECK none of the above, the other response stubs will not be grayed out and are checkable. In this way you don’t get BOTH checked items AND none of the above. Can you tell me how to do this with advanced logic or otherwise? I thought the show/hide toggle was supposed to allow me to say: If None of the above checked, hide all others.
Hi Gaye,
It’s not actually an option, if you just call an option ‘none of the above’ the system will understand that it’s a none of the above option and de-select all options upon selection of ‘none of the above’.
It will not however gray out all the other options. This is something you can create yourself with Javascript or we can create for you through our Professional Services department.
Hope this helps,
Chad
Hi,
I have a table radio question where respondents select one answer for each row. I want just one of these rows to be the trigger question - is this possible?
At the moment the “show” option is not given against each row title.
Thanks,
Vicky
Hi Vicky,
Correct you can only run show/hide triggers off table columns. They cannot be run off table rows.
If you really need to run show/hide logic off table rows, you can flip the rows and columns of the table.
At the higher account levels you can use more advanced logic types that will be able to do what you’re asking.
Hope this helps,
Chad
Thanks Chad,
I subscribe at the enterprise level - are any of the more advanced logic types available there?
Thanks,
Vicky
Hi Vicky,
Sure, at the Enterprise level there’s an action called Advanced Page Jumping and Logic.
This action will allow you to jump to another page in the survey based on the answer to a row(s) in a table.
It’s not quite show/hide logic, but the result will be the same.
If you want to actually do show/hide logic on rows in a table then you can do this with some javascript programming on your end or you can hire our Professional Services department to build this feature for you.
Hope this helps,
Chad
I am also having trouble with logic in a table. I have yes/no radio boxes in a column, and want to jump to different pages based on what each row is checked. It seems like it should be easy to specify, but I can only set the trigger value to the ‘answer’ to the entire question (which, again, is a table full of individual questions).
Any help would be appreciated.
Julia
Julia,
That’s correct, we trigger based on someone answering a question when part of a table, not based on the specific column and row. That feature may become available soon, but is still being built and tested, so no timeline is available. The easiest workaround is to place your radio button question on its own and then trigger based upon each individual answer.
i want to use trigger in a pulldown menu.
example: in the pulldown i have a “other” option. if they select “other” i want a text box to appear so they can type in whatever “other” is. can i do this?
Shawn,
You can add another question, hiding the question number, below this pull-down menu. You can then follow this tutorial to show/hide based on them choosing OTHER in your dropdown box and then a textbox for their option will appear.
Tried to use this feature but it didn’t work when I uploaded and embedded the survey into our website. Is their a fix for this. I am paying for the Personal plan.
Hi, Karen.
The Show/When logic is available for the Pro and Enterprise level accounts. It is not included in the Personal Plan.
Cheri
Hi Surveygismo-Team,
I have the free version and when trying to do “Step 2: Choose a “trigger” question” I noticed that the option SHOW/ HIDE TRiGGERS is not offered. Am I doing it right or do I missed to do another step beforehand?
Thanks.
Hi.
The Show/Hide logic is only available for Pro and Enterprise level accounts. That’s why you don’t have that feature available in your free account.
How do I do nested Show/Hide questions?
Here’s a simple shorthand example to illustrate:
Q1: Do you use paper or software or both?
Q2: What kind of software do use, boxed or custom?
Q3: What is the name of the software?
I would like to combine all of this into one question, but don’t see the capability to do that at our Personal level. (If I’m please correct me.)
As such, I’m trying to structure it so that Q2 and Q3 are only seen if “software” or “both” is selected for Q1.
And, of course, I only want to show Q3 if “boxed” is selected.
I’ve tried the various options, and the result has been that once I set a trigger on Q1, if that answer is “software” or “both,” Q2 and Q3 are shown immediately.
Thanks for your help–
Lee
Lee,
This would be a better question for our forums. However, you would set Q1 answers to only show Q2, and the answers/options in Q2 to trigger Q3. Therefore, Q2 and Q3 are set as ‘hidden unless shown by a show/hide trigger’, and then Q1 and Q2 are set with show/hide triggers within their particular options. 1 shows 2, 2 shows 3.
If a respondent accidentally triggers the invisible question, then corrects his or her answer, the triggered question doesn’t hide again. Am I doing this right?