Exporting data in a format readable by excel

jaberi · September 22, 2021, 9:21pm

Hello everyone,
I exported data from kobo collect to excel in XLS format but excel does not read it. The data in too big and I cannot edit manually.
Kindly help in on the best format i can export this data and read by excel.

Regards

Kal_Lam · September 23, 2021, 3:36am

Welcome back to the community, @jaberi! Could you list out the exact steps so that we could also try out the same at our end?

jaberi · October 7, 2021, 12:53pm

Thanks for the timely reply though I had taken long to see the message.
These are the steps I took to export data to excel.

Go to data
Click on download
Select XLS format and lable.
Click export.

Thanks

Kal_Lam · October 7, 2021, 4:09pm

Could you also share with us a screenshot of the XLS format which you say is not readable? We would also like to see it at our end. Maybe this should also give us a pictorial idea of issue.

jaberi · October 19, 2021, 12:59pm

Hi,
Attached herein is the screenshot of downloaded data that excel is not reading. If you critically look at the figure in the screenshot, they appear as if there are formulas in the cell.

Kal_Lam · October 19, 2021, 2:35pm

@jaberi, could you also let us know the column that you are trying to refer to?

jaberi · October 19, 2021, 3:32pm

All cells with figures are not readable by excel until you re-enter them.

Thanks

Kal_Lam · October 19, 2021, 5:15pm

Sorry, I could still not figure it out. Could you mark it in the screenshot so that I am also able to follow you?

jaberi · October 20, 2021, 5:31am

Kindly look at the cells where the figures are highlighted in light blue. All cells with figures appear with a green mark at the extreme left corner and excel does not read them. See the screenshot

Kal_Lam · October 20, 2021, 5:50am

Have you tried converting them to numbers?

jaberi · October 20, 2021, 6:14am

Yes I tried to format them to numbers but they don’t change.

Kal_Lam · October 20, 2021, 6:46am

Did you check the ! as shown in the image below to convert it to numbers (you will need to do this manually)?

The second approach is to uncheck Store date and number responses as text that is located under DATA>Download>Advanced options: