I am facing an issue with multiple-choice entries in KoboToolbox. The question allows respondents to select multiple options from a list of five choices, including an “Others” option. When “Others” is selected, a text box appears for respondents to enter additional details.
The problem arises in the data file—although all options are visible in the form preview, only four selected options and “Others” are recorded in the dataset. Some selected choices are missing from the exported data.
How can I resolve this issue to ensure that all selected options appear correctly in the data file?
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Welcome to the community, @farhaz_sakib! That should not be the case. Could you try this out in a new project by cloning the project that has this issue?
Let us know on what happens!
The problem is that I have already closed my data collection process, and more than 6,000 data have been collected. I tried downloading the XML Legacy file, but data is missing there as well. I don’t know what to do now!
This issue may be due to a limit on the number of choices being recorded. Try these fixes:
- Check Form Settings – Ensure there’s no restriction on the number of choices allowed.
- Verify XLSForm – If using an XLSForm, confirm that all choices are properly named and formatted.
- Test Data Export Formats – Try exporting in different formats (CSV, XLSX) to see if data appears correctly.
- Use
select_multiple Properly – Ensure the select_multiple question type is correctly configured in KoboToolbox.
- Check for Hidden Constraints – Review any validation rules that might limit responses.
If the issue persists, test submissions with different selections to pinpoint the missing values and report it to KoboToolbox support. 
Thank you for your reply. Here is a demo of my problem.
Is there any way I can fixed this problem?
Please confirm in your form definition that all the options in your select choice list have a unique name. If for some reason you have used the same name value for the ‘Transport sector’, ‘Business institutions’ and ‘Workplaces’ - and presumably have allow_choice_duplicates set true - then all these options will effectively submit the same raw value (!). So the backend has no way to actually determine what original option was selected (it’s probably picking the first one that matches the raw value it got, and showing ‘Transport sector’ for it…)
I suspect you have duplicate choice names in your form definition.
Unfortunately, if you have inadvertently used the same raw name value for your options, there is no way to reliably determine from the raw submission data which actual duplicated option(s) the user really selected [although you may be able to infer it; eg if you have 3 options that have duplicate names, and your raw submission data has the value repeated three times, then you can reliably say all 3 were selected].
Thank you for your reply. I think you are right. Can you let me know if I now change the name value manually, will it help me retrieve the data that has already been submitted?
Note: the submitted data is still not showing in the correct order. This problem may have arisen because I created the data in a language other than English. That’s why the Kobo system automatically generated the name field with underscores. Some underscores may contain the same value.
Please let me know.
You would probably need to change your form definition - to now ensure all the choice options have a unique name value - and then go back thru ALL the submissions and manually remap the submitted values to what you believe the correct new value should be. At least then when you retrieve the data back out these options will hopefully now be shown with a different corresponding label.
the submitted data is still not showing in the correct order.
Strictly speaking the order in which selected options appear in the raw data for a selected_multi response is not prescribed; it will depend on what client was used to submit it (eg KoboCollect vs Enketo). You might be able to infer something knowing what client was used, but I dont know how reliable this is…
When I check individual forms from the edit data section, everything appears to be correct. Do I need to resubmit all the forms one by one again? The problem is that I have more than 6k entries.
