Display Problems With Summary Charts and Tables

[kfranker]

Is there a way to edit Source Items in Reports so we can remove unwanted code from them?

When creating a Summary Chart in one of our reports, we are having the page coding display instead of the desired pie chart or bar graph. This issue is happening with some, but not all of our radio button questions and our short response questions in a particular survey. Here's an example of the code we're seeing in the Report Editor:

"Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-priority:99;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;mso-para-margin:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}Which of the following best describes your current position?"

This code displays inside the rounded box where the graph or chart normally appears. We are using Checkbox 4.5 in a Windows XP environment, with IE 7 as the browser.

Thanks for any suggestions you can provide on how to get the summary chart to display instead of the code.

[pwiesner]

Based on your description of the problem it sounds like the question text was copied from Microsoft Word. When text is copied from Word it often includes Microsoft's proprietary style information. Checkbox attempts to remove HTML/XML from question text when generating reports, but due to complexity is not always able to remove the style information added by Word.

There are a couple of ways you can resolve this issue.

1 - Edit the question text and manually remove Word's styling. Select the "< >" icon located at the bottom of the item editor switch the editor to HTML mode. In HTML mode you should be able to see the extra data which has been copied from Word.

Note: The can select the "Paste from Word" option to automatically remove Word's styling when copying text in the future.


2 - You can add Alias text to your questions. When creating report items there is an option to use the question Alias text.

Lastly, in the Checkbox 4.6 release we have improved the code responsible for removing HTML/XML from question test. It is likely that patching to the current release of the product would resolve your issue as well.

[kfranker]

Thanks for your excellent suggestions! Your Option #1 took care of the issue quite nicely. I didn't realize that I could view and delete the stray HTML code from Word in the question editor screen. This is very helpful!