Creating a poll

How often do you create a poll? How much time does it take to enter and process the responses? Do you think that you can work faster? While you’re conducting a survey do you sometimes wish to be mobile? If you have these issues to the attention then it will certainly be interesting text that follows. Excel is a great software for creating and processing of survey results. Whereas, with the release of new versions, you can also keep the polls “in the cloud”, the process of surveying has never been easier …

Although it’s January I love to fantasize about summer holidays. In the example that follows we’ll interview respondents where they would like to go on vacation. The survey will include the serial number, name and surname of the respondents, with two questions:

• Do you plan to go for summer vacation this year?
• What’s your favorite holiday destination?

First, lets change the name of current sheet to „Poll“. To do that we have to right click on a tab with name of the sheet, select option Rename from the menu, and then enter a new name. Further, we’ll enter header of the table with following names:

• S/N
• NAME
• PLANNING A HOLIDAY?
• PERFECT DESTINATION

During the interview the first two fields will be entered manually, and the other should be chosen from a list of answers. On this occasion, we will make another worksheet and change its name to “Code Lists”. We’ll create a table with two columns. The first will contain the answers, “Yes” and “No”. The second will contain a list of several attractive summer destinations (Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Spain, etc.).

Click in cell C2, under the column heading “PLANNING A HOLIDAY?”. Then go to the Data ribbon, and there from the eponymous menu, select Data Validation. With this option, we will assign to cell C2 choice between two possible answers (“Yes” and “No”). After the dialog window appears you should go to the combo box named Allow and select an option called List. Further, in the text box named Scope you should enter a range which contains „Yes“ and „No“ answers; it is a range within „Code Lists“ spreadsheet (‘Code Lists’!$A$1:$A$2). The range should contain fixed addresses. After you confirm the entry in cell C2 will be possible to enter only one of two responses; ie, “Yes” or “No” will be selected from the list. Click on cell D2, under the column heading “PERFECT DESTINATION”, and repeat the process. This time, the choice should be made between the value of destination listed in range ‘Code Lists’!$C$1:$C$9.

Now we should transform traditional table into a structured table. Select a range A1:D2, and than click together CTRL+T. The dialog box Create Table will appear. In the box called Where is the data for your table you should see a range that you previously selected. Further check the option My Table has headers and finish the process by clicking OK button. You have created a structured table! Now be imaginative, enter names of some famous people and choose where should they spend a summer holiday.

We have just created a poll! Now it would be good idea to choose a convenient way to display its results. For this purpose, based on structured table we just created, we will create a Pivot Table, and then Pivot Chart. Click on the table and press combination of keys CTRL + A. Then go to the Insert ribbon and select an option named Pivot Table. The dialog box will appear. A box Table/Range should contain a range that we just have selected. Also, we should choose an option New Worksheet to create a Pivot table in new sheet. Our goal is to create a chart with favorite holiday destinations of respondents. To achieve that we should drag PERFECT DESTINATION to rows section of Pivot table. Further we should drag S/N to Values section and change Value Field Settings so it should count (instead performing a sum) od selected fields. In filter section we’ll drag PLANNING A HOLIDAY and further choose value „Yes“ to filter the report.

Now we have created a simple Pivot table with results we need for the Pivot Chart. Click on the Pivot table and further go to Analysis ribbon. There you should choose  Pivot Chart option. A dialog box will appear from which you should choose Pie chart and you’ll create a Pivot Chart within a spreadsheet. Further go to Design ribbon and choose Move Chart option to put it on a separate worksheet. Then we should change a name of new worksheet to „Analysis“ and hide worksheets that contain Pivot table and code lists.

The result of our work is a poll. We’ll use structured table to enter the data and when we want to see the results we’ll go to Analysis worksheet. By clicking Refresh button in Analyze ribbon the chart should be updated. Further we can create several more Pivot tables and charts to illustrate our data and get the conclusions we need.