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I am collecting data from a form I created and sent out to several recipients. I have created the response file and have correctly added Returned Forms. My issue is that for two response forms, it appears that the participant somehow changed the field names, and for these two sets of data, they "have different fields." I need the data from all data sets to align properly, otherwise I cannot do the appropriate analysis of the information. Is there a way to fix this? Is there a way to fix the field names on the returned form so that it matches with the rest of the other returned forms' field names?
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What file format is returned to you? PDF, FDF, XFDF...?
Have you examined the actual data in these problem cases?
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The file is returned in PDF format. If I open the file directly, the form looks identical to what was distributed. The data that they supplied all looks accurate on the physical document. The issue becomes when I add that data to my response file, the fields do not match with the rest of the data that was added, despite the forms (that were distributed and returned) being identical.
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It might look the same, but that doesn't mean it's actually the same. Do you see the same fields when you go to Prepare Form mode as in the original file?
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Apologies for my ignorance, do you mean do I see the same fields on the distributed form, or on the form that was returned to me in pdf format?
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Both. Are they the same?
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In the returned form, part of the text of the field name has been duplicated. In the distributed form, the text of the field name is not duplicated. Example: Grade.1 [distributed form] vs. Grade.Grade.1 [returned form]. I could manually go into all the fields and remove the duplicated text, but there are about 300 fields, so this would be very cumbersome.
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For the majority of my returned forms, there is no duplicated text in the field name, the field name matches in the distributed form with the field name in the returned form.
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Whatever app was used to fill it in made a mess of it, most likely. If you can export the form data to a text file or an XML it will probably be easier to make those adjustments there, using a regular expression.