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Importing Survey Results into Shapes

Import completed survey results from an Excel or CSV file, so responses collected outside Shapes live alongside your other surveys.

Written by Efrat Barak Zadok

If you ran a survey in another tool or collected responses in a spreadsheet, you can import the completed results into Shapes. The import creates a survey with its responses already submitted, so you can view them in Shapes alongside your other surveys.

Supported File Formats

  • Excel (.xlsx)

  • CSV (.csv)

How to Prepare Your File

Structure your file with one row per respondent and one column per question. Each row holds one person's answers.

To link responses to employees, include an employee email column. Whether you include it decides the survey's privacy (see Anonymous vs. Identifiable below).

How to Import Survey Results

  1. Go to Surveys from the left-hand menu.

  2. Click Import (next to Create New Survey).

The import wizard has three steps:

  1. Upload file — upload your Excel or CSV file.

  2. Survey details — enter the survey name, start date and end date.

  3. Result — see the outcome of the import.

What the Import Creates

  • Status: the survey is created as Running or Ended, depending on the end date you entered. It is not created as a draft.

  • Responses: every imported row is a response that is already submitted.

  • Participants: set to all employees.

  • Questions: every question is optional.

Anonymous vs. Identifiable

You don't choose the privacy setting during import. Your file decides it:

  • File includes an email column → the survey is identifiable, and each response is linked to the employee with that email.

  • File has no email column → the survey is anonymous.

⚠️ Important: Rows whose email doesn't match any employee in Shapes are skipped. If no rows can be imported, the import fails.

Who Can Import Survey Results?

  • Super Admins → always ✅

  • Admins → only if their role has the Surveys People & responses permission (Account Settings → Permissions → [Admin Role] → Surveys)

💡 Tips

  • Use import to bring over results from Google Forms, Typeform or SurveyMonkey. Export the responses to CSV and import the file.

  • For an identifiable survey, check that the emails in your file match the employees' emails in Shapes, so no responses are skipped.

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