• Customer Experience
    Customer Experience
  • Employee Experience
    Employee Experience
  • Brand Experience
    Brand Experience
  • Product Experience
    Product Experience
  • Core XM
    Core XM

Importing Responses (EX)

What's on This Page:

Was this helpful?


This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The feedback you submit here is used only to help improve this page.

That’s great! Thank you for your feedback!

Thank you for your feedback!

Qtip: Contact your Customer Success Representative or your Account Executive for pricing on importing. Imported responses are considered separate from and will not impact the account’s purchased participants.
Qtip: This page describes functionality available to Engagement, Lifecycle, and Ad Hoc Employee Research projects. For more details on each, see Types of Employee Experience Projects.

About Importing Responses

You can use the Import Data option in the Data & Analysis tab to upload test or example data, or to upload data collected externally.

Qtip: This page is for importing response data into Employee Engagement or Lifecycle.

  • If you are importing response data for the purpose of mapping historical sources to your dashboard, make sure you also check out Uploading Historical Data.
  • If you want to import anonymous responses, see the Import Anonymous Responses support page.
  • If you are interested in learning how to import your list of participants, please visit our Adding Participants support page.

Preparing & Importing Your Data

Qtip: Do you have unique identifiers enabled for your brand? Use the instructions in this section to import data into your project. If your brand does not have unique identifiers, see the Legacy section of this page.

You will need to make sure your data file is ready for import. Your data needs to be in a format Qualtrics will understand, and it needs to exactly match the format and content of the survey you’re importing the data into.

Getting a Template File

  1. Navigate to your Data & Analysis tab.
    Export and Import button expanded to reveal the Export Data option
  2. Click Export & Import.
  3. Select Export Data.
  4. Make sure CSV or TSV is selected.
    CSV selected from the list of export formats along the top of the exporter. More Options highlighted on bottom-left
  5. Click Download.
Qtip: It’s okay to export your data with choice text or numeric values – the importer knows how to read both.

File Requirements

For the import to work, the data file needs a special column that identifies the participant the response is from. You’ll notice that the file you exported has a column for the Participant’s Unique Identifier. As the name implies, you must include each respondent’s unique identifier in this column in order to pair the survey answers with the appropriate employee.

Qtip: If your file contains a unique identifier for a participant who does not exist in the project, the import will fail with the error message, “The import could not be completed. No responses were processed.” Best practices are to ensure that every response you’re importing with a unique identifier has the corresponding participant already in the project.

The inclusion of this column also makes it so you don’t need to include metadata in your import. The importer recognizes the participant’s unique identifier, and associates the appropriate participant metadata with the response. Any metadata you try to include in this file – manager ID, location, department, participant email, parent unit, etc. – will be ignored.

Qtip: Looking to change your participant metadata? Check out our support page on importing metadata updates instead.

Be sure to keep your file in CSV, TSV, or TXT format. The importer cannot read any other file types, even if they can also be read by Excel.

Note that the maximum file size is 100MB.

Qtip: Participants whose responses were already collected will not modify the existing response. If the unique identifier column is the same, the new response will be skipped over (not uploaded). If the unique identifier is missing, the response will be uploaded as a separate, anonymous response. See our Response Editing and Retake Survey Link pages for information on editing your existing data.

Importing Your Responses

  1. Navigate to the Data & Analysis tab.
    Import Data option from Export & Import dropdown in Data & Analysis tab
  2. Click on Export & Import.
  3. Select Import Data.
  4. Click Browse and select the file you wish to upload. This can be in CSV, TSV, or TXT format.
    Upload Response Data menu with Browse button, Delimiter dropdown, and Upload button
  5. If desired, adjust your Delimiter. Generally this is set to Comma for CSV and Tab for TSV.
    Qtip: This option is especially helpful if you are uploading a TXT file. You can specify your delimiter here.
  6. Click Upload.
  7. On this window, you can check whether your fields are pulling in correctly and assign different values. See Configuring Your Import on the Survey Platform support pages for more information on this part of the process.
    Configure the Import menu, with button to Import Responses
  8. Click Import Responses.
Qtip: For further troubleshooting advice, see the Troubleshooting Data Table Imports and CSV / TSV Upload Issues pages. Although these pages are for the Survey Platform, the functionality is the same in Employee Engagement and Lifecycle.

Legacy: Preparing & Importing Your Data

Qtip: These instructions are for brands that do not have unique identifiers. If you do have unique identifiers, see Preparing & Importing Your Data.

Getting a Template File

You will need to make sure your data file is ready for import. Your data needs to be in a format Qualtrics will understand, and it needs to exactly match the format and content of the survey you’re importing the data into.

To get a template for a data set you can import, you will need to export the data in Legacy format.

  1. Navigate to your Data & Analysis tab.
    Export and Import button expanded to reveal the Export Data option
  2. Click Export & Import.
  3. Select Export Data.
  4. Click Use Legacy Exporter.
    Use Legacy Exporter link on the top-right of the exporter
  5. Make sure CSV is selected.
    CSV selected from the list of export formats along the top of the exporter. More Options highlighted on bottom-left
  6. Click More Options.
  7. Make sure Use numeric values is selected.
    Use Numeric Values setting selected. Download button on bottom-right indicated.
  8. Click Download.

File Requirements

For the import to work, the data file needs a special column that identifies the participant the response is from. You have two options:

  • Email: A column named Email containing the participant’s email. These emails must be spelled the same as they are in the Participants section, but they are not case-sensitive.
    Qtip: After you retrieve the example file, make sure you change the PersonEmail column to just say Email!
    A legacy file. The first row has Vs in the header names. In the second row, there's a column header that says Email, not PersonEmail
  • Person Metadata: You can also identify responses based on person metadata. It’s advised you use something unique like an EmployeeID field used to identify Employee Engagement participants in the hierarchy. The name format of this column must be Person_MetadataName. For example, Person_EmployeeID will use a metadata called EmployeeID to identify the participant.

The inclusion of one of these columns also makes it so you don’t need to include metadata in your import. The importer recognizes the participant email (or person metadata), and associates any additional metadata with the response.

Qtip: Looking to change your participant metadata? Check out our support page on importing metadata updates.

Be sure to keep your file in CSV or TSV format. The importer cannot read any other file types, even if they can also be read by Excel.

Note that the maximum file size is 5000 rows.

Legacy: Importing Your Responses

  1. Navigate to the Data tab.
    Export and Import button expanded to reveal Import Data option
  2. Click Export & Import.
  3. Select Import Data.
  4. Click Use Legacy Importer.
    Use Legacy Importer link on top-right of the importer
  5. Click Browse and select the CSV file you saved on your computer.
    The Browse button is highlighted in the center of the Importer. More Options is indicated on the bottom-left.
  6. If desired or necessary, click More Options to access Delimiter or Enclosure.
    Qtip: If the data is not formatted correctly in the preview (e.g., bunched up instead of divided into columns), your data may not be separating (or “delimiting”) correctly. To fix this, choose a different delimiter. For further troubleshooting techniques, visit our CSV/TSV Upload Issues page.
  7. Check that the number of responses verified is the number of responses in your CSV file.
    Verify Fields across the bottom of the importer is indicated. So is the Import button on the bottom-right

    Warning: If the number of responses shown does not match the number you have in your CSV file, then do not click Import Responses. If you do, the responses will not import correctly and you will need to delete the invalid data.
  8. Click Import.

Once the data is imported, a notice will appear detailing the number of successfully imported responses and any columns and rows that were skipped.

Qtip: Participants whose responses were already collected will not modify the existing response, but will be uploaded as a separate, anonymous response. See our Response Editing and Retake Survey Link pages for information on editing your existing data.

If you are not using one of the provided delimiters in the More Options menu, you can click into the Delimiter text box and type the symbol of the delimiter being used.

Delimiter settings are highlighted and set to Tab

FAQ