Predefined Lists

Cases may well arise in which you wish to reuse one or more scales, or one or more brand-lists, product-lists, etc. several times in a Survey. Authoring allows you to predefine such lists, and reuse them in forms (go to About Answers for more information), or even in other lists (nested lists). If you change the contents of a list, this change will be reflected in all questions that use the changed list.

To create a predefined list:

1. Drag a Scale/List object from the New Objects folder to the Reusable scale/list folder, or right-click on the Reusable scale/list folder and select Insert Scale/List from the drop-down menu - .



Figure 1 - Inserting a Scale/List object into the Scales and Lists folder

A new list is created in the Reusable scale/list folder and its Details page opens. If you wish to return to a list at a later time, double-click on the list in the Survey Tree > Scales and Lists folder to open its Details page.

2. Create the list in the same way as for a standard answer list.

• List ID - a descriptive name for the list. The List ID is the text that is displayed in the drop-down list when inserting the predefined-list in another form or list. Note that the List ID cannot contain Unicode characters.
• Exclude Translation - check to exclude the list from the translator interface (go to About Translator for more information).
• Use Images in Answers - check this box if you wish to use images for the answer options, instead of buttons or selection boxes (go to Using Images as the Answer Options for more information).
• Left and right text - check to allow right-texts in the predefined list. Note that these will only be used when the question using the predefined list is enabled as a right-text question.
• Answers - The answer-list behaves like the list in forms and loops (go to About Answers for more information).
• Scratchpad - The scratchpad is a text editor available in several screens (go to Scratchpad for more information).

Important
As from Version 18, codes are mandatory for all the answers in predefined lists. If you do not add codes manually when you create the list then consecutive numerical codes (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.) will be added automatically to the list when it is saved.
If the predefined list is added to another list that contains additional answers then the codes used by the two lists may conflict. In this event a message will be displayed and you will be given the opportunity to resolve the conflict (go to Conflicting Answer Codes for more information).

You can copy and paste text directly from MSWord into the text fields. Note however that this copying process can take with it considerable amounts of unnecessary HTML formatting code, and this code will increase the file size and can create problems for later text formatting within Authoring . Click the Clean HTML...button to remove this unnecessary code. Note that this functionality will keep intact the majority of "desirable" formatting code, such as bold, italics, text color etc.

Note: It is not possible to have a header in a scale of a grid inside a 3DGrid. If you include a header in a predefined list and that list is used in a scale, then the header is ignored.

Note: While a predefined answer list is being used in one or more questions it cannot be deleted from the Survey Tree. If you attempt to delete a list while it is in use, a warning will be displayed containing the question IDs of those questions in which the list is being used.