LimeSurvey Excel Builder

Design LimeSurvey questionnaires entirely in Excel — with multi-language support, automatic HTML formatting, and one-click import.

What is this?

An Excel template + R conversion script that lets you author LimeSurvey surveys in a spreadsheet instead of the web interface. Write your questions, answers, skip logic, and translations in Excel, run the R script, and import the resulting file directly into LimeSurvey.

Why use this instead of the LimeSurvey UI?

• Format text directly in Excel — bold, italic, underline, and color any word or phrase in Excel; the exact formatting will be preserved in the questionnaire, including partial formatting within a cell
• Faster authoring — type questions, answers, and logic in a familiar spreadsheet environment
• Easy translations — add language columns (text_fr, text_es, text_ro, ...) instead of duplicating rows
• Version control — track changes with Git, collaborate with colleagues on survey design
• Batch editing — find/replace, copy/paste, and reorder questions using standard Excel operations
• Offline work — no need for a running LimeSurvey instance during survey design
• Reusable blocks — copy question groups between surveys by copying rows

Quick Start

Option 1: Use the Web App (no installation needed)

Go to limesurvey-excel-builder, upload your .xlsx file, and download the converted .txt file ready for LimeSurvey import.

Option 2: Run the R Script Locally

1. Open limesurvey_survey_builder.xlsx in Excel
2. Edit the Survey Design sheet — add your questions, answers, and settings
3. Run xlsx_to_limesurvey_tsv.R in RStudio. The script will generate a *.txt file
4. In LimeSurvey: Create Survey → Import → select the generated *.txt file

Files

File	Description
limesurvey_survey_builder.xlsx	Excel template with example survey, reference sheets, and instructions
xlsx_to_limesurvey_tsv.R	R script that converts the Excel file to LimeSurvey TSV import format

Features

Excel Template

• Color-coded rows — conditional formatting highlights groups, questions, subquestions, answers, and settings in different colors
• Dropdown validation — class, mandatory, and other columns have dropdown lists
• 4 reference sheets — Question Types, Relevance & Validation, Survey Settings, Instructions
• 41 advanced attribute columns — array filtering, sliders, date ranges, validation, and more
• Example survey — 178 rows covering 30+ question types with skip logic, validation, calculated fields, and tailored text

Multi-Language Support

Instead of duplicating every row for each language, add columns:

text_en	help_en	text_fr	help_fr	text_es	help_es
What is your age?		Quel est votre âge ?		¿Cuál es su edad?

The R script automatically:

• Detects all text_xx / help_xx columns
• Generates the multi-language TSV rows LimeSurvey expects
• Falls back to the base language (or any available language) for untranslated cells
• Auto-sets the additional_languages survey setting

Automatic HTML Conversion

Write plain text in Excel. The R script handles all HTML:

• Line breaks (Alt+Enter in Excel):
  • Q/G/SL text → separate <p> paragraphs
  • SQ/A text → <br> tags (compact labels)
• Cell formatting → HTML tags:
  • Bold → <strong>
  • Italic → <em>
  • Underline → <u>
  • Font color → <span style='color:#HEX'>
• Partial formatting — if only one word in a cell is bold or colored, only that word gets HTML tags
• Cells already containing HTML are passed through unchanged

Survey Structure

Each row in the Excel sheet represents one survey element:

Class	Meaning	Example
S	Survey setting	format = G (group-by-group)
SL	Survey language text	Survey title, welcome text, end text
G	Question group	Section header
Q	Question	A question with type, code, relevance
SQ	Subquestion	Row/column in array or multiple choice
A	Answer option	Choice in a list or scale

Row order matters: S → SL → G → Q → SQ → A → Q → SQ → A → ... → G → ...

Requirements

• Excel (or LibreOffice Calc) for editing the template
• R (≥ 4.0) with RStudio
• R packages (auto-installed on first run): readxl, tidyxl, xml2
• LimeSurvey (≥ 3.x) for import

Configuration

In the R script, set the input filename (line 23):

input_file <- "limesurvey_survey_builder.xlsx"

The output file is generated automatically with a .txt extension.

Question Codes

LimeSurvey question codes (the name column) must:

• Start with a letter
• Contain only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9)
• No underscores, hyphens, spaces, or special characters

Good: hhsize, cigsperday, dietfreq
Bad: hh_size, cigs_per_day, diet-freq

The R script warns about codes containing underscores.

Adding Translations

1. Insert new columns after the existing language columns (e.g., text_de, help_de)
2. Translate the text for G, Q, SQ, A, and SL rows
3. Leave text_xx empty for S rows (settings are language-independent)
4. Run the R script — it auto-detects the new language columns

Untranslated cells automatically fall back to the base language, so you can translate incrementally.

Example Survey

The included example demonstrates:

• 6 question groups with 41 questions
• Question types: single choice, multiple choice, arrays, numeric, text, date, file upload, ranking, dual-scale, equation, boilerplate
• Skip logic (relevance conditions)
• Input validation (regex, numeric ranges)
• Calculated fields (BMI from height/weight)
• Array filtering (show only selected conditions)
• Tailored closing message with expression logic
• Multi-language content (English, French, Romanian, Spanish)

Validation

The R script validates your survey before export:

• Checks for valid class values
• Detects duplicate question codes per language
• Warns about underscores in question codes
• Reports row counts by class type
• Lists advanced attributes in use

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
Colors don't show in Excel	Conditional formatting uses bgColor — may need a restart of Excel
Import fails silently	Check that all question codes are alphanumeric (no underscores)
Translations don't appear	The script auto-generates all rows per language; ensure columns are named text_xx / help_xx
Special characters garbled	Output uses UTF-8 with BOM — import should auto-detect encoding
LimeSurvey renames codes	Codes with underscores get stripped; use alphanumeric only

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests for:

• Additional question type examples
• New language translations for the example survey
• Bug fixes or improvements to the R script
• Documentation improvements