Hi, I think I’m missing something obvious, but… I’d like to have a field (e.g. text field or integer), but don’t want to show it on the form. How can I hide it?
Maybe you could do the following workaround using the disabled
feature as outlined in the steps shown below:
-
Create a survey form with a
disabled
column and markTRUE
to all those questions that you do not wish to make it visible for the enumerators.
You could also use the following xlsform:
Disabled.xlsx (9.6 KB) -
Now deploy the survey project.
-
Collect data and submit them to the server. You should see the
disabled
column in the dataset. Sample of how it would look:
-
Now, if you wish to make entries to the
disabled
questions while editing or collecting data you could simply make a small edit by removing theTRUE
from thedisabled
column as outlined in the image shown below:
You could use the following xlsform:
Disabled.xlsx (9.6 KB) -
Now replace the xlsform that you have edited and then redeploy.
-
You will now be able to add comments to those variables that you had disabled previously.
Awesome, thank you so much!!
Hello @Kal_Lam,
Is there any documentation on this?.
(Didn’t find anything in https://xlsform.org, https://getodk.github.io/xforms-spec/ or https://xlsform.org/en/ref-table/)
Feature disabled is new? Since when?
This disabled could probably also be used to hide sensible data (by a new form version).
What is the result on export and report?.
Type hidden (documented) is another option (but more restricted, e.g. not allowing to hide select_.).
Even calculate type with calculation now("") might work (example for text).
Also a user-ID related relevant might do the job, not needing a new form deployment.
Kind regards
Hi @wroos,
Regarding your first queries:
This post should answer your query:
Regarding your second queries:
It only hides the questions while collecting data. It does not hide the data while downloading even though you have disabled
some questions while downloading. The same principle follows while viewing the disabled
questions in the custom report
or in the DATA>Table view
.
Regarding your third queries:
The similarity between a hidden
question type and a disabled
feature is that they both hide a question while collecting data. But the main difference between the two is that a hidden
question is able to collect data if you have some default
values or some calculations
in it but with a disabled
feature you are not able to collect any information whether it is from a default
value or a calculation
.
Hello @Kal_Lam,
Where can the disabled feature be found in the KoBo/ODK documentation, please?
Kind regards