Collecting telephone numbers in a form

Users
1

Hi
Can anyone help? I have built a form and collected data; in the form I
have asked for the interviewee's telephone number using the telephone
number question but when I export the data the 0 is missing from the
beginning of the telephone number. How can I get the data to export
including the 0 at the start of the telephone number?
Thanks
Amanda

2

Amanda,

Unfortunately this issue occurred at the time the data was entered.
CommCare has a special data type (Phone number or numeric ID) that can be
used for collecting "numbers" where the specifics of the string entered
(IE: 010 v. 10) are important. The normal "number" data input assumes that
only the actual number being entered needs to be retained. There's not an
easy way for the data to be fixed in our DB retroactively.

You can use excel to Pad the input data to add leading Zeros to the input
data, however,

zeroes-0s-to-existing-excel-values-to-certain-length

which can correct the issue directly inside of the export.

-Clayton

··· On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 4:25 AM, Amanda Agar wrote:

Hi
Can anyone help? I have built a form and collected data; in the form I
have asked for the interviewee's telephone number using the telephone
number question but when I export the data the 0 is missing from the
beginning of the telephone number. How can I get the data to export
including the 0 at the start of the telephone number?
Thanks
Amanda

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3

Hi Amanda,

Just to add to what Clayton mentioned - if you're noticing that you did
enter the data with the "Phone Number or Numeric ID" question type but the
data is still missing the leading zero in the export, it might be because
you've downloaded the data in *.csv format and Excel is automatically
removing the leading zero when it opens the file. If that's the case,
there's two possible solutions:

  1. Choose a different format for the export (such as Excel 2007) and
    download again from CommCareHQ, or

  2. When opening the *.csv file in Excel, instead of double clicking on it,
    you'll want to open it with the Text Import Wizard
    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Text-Import-Wizard-c5b02af6-fda1-4440-899f-f78bafe41857?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
    which
    will let you choose the Text data type for the column in question so that
    it preserves the leading zero.

Thanks,
Giovanni

··· On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 11:14 AM, Clayton Sims wrote:

Amanda,

Unfortunately this issue occurred at the time the data was entered.
CommCare has a special data type (Phone number or numeric ID) that can be
used for collecting "numbers" where the specifics of the string entered
(IE: 010 v. 10) are important. The normal "number" data input assumes that
only the actual number being entered needs to be retained. There's not an
easy way for the data to be fixed in our DB retroactively.

You can use excel to Pad the input data to add leading Zeros to the input
data, however,
padding - Add leading zeroes/0's to existing Excel values to certain length - Stack Overflow
s-0s-to-existing-excel-values-to-certain-length

which can correct the issue directly inside of the export.

-Clayton

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 4:25 AM, Amanda Agar gzf4.1over@gmail.com wrote:

Hi
Can anyone help? I have built a form and collected data; in the form I
have asked for the interviewee's telephone number using the telephone
number question but when I export the data the 0 is missing from the
beginning of the telephone number. How can I get the data to export
including the 0 at the start of the telephone number?
Thanks
Amanda

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4

Hi and thanks for the feedback. I think this is the most possible reason
as we set the form to capture 'phone number or numeric ID' will give it a
try.

Thanks

Amanda

··· On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 2:39 PM, Giovanni Capalbo wrote:

Hi Amanda,

Just to add to what Clayton mentioned - if you're noticing that you did
enter the data with the "Phone Number or Numeric ID" question type but the
data is still missing the leading zero in the export, it might be because
you've downloaded the data in *.csv format and Excel is automatically
removing the leading zero when it opens the file. If that's the case,
there's two possible solutions:

  1. Choose a different format for the export (such as Excel 2007) and
    download again from CommCareHQ, or

  2. When opening the *.csv file in Excel, instead of double clicking on it,
    you'll want to open it with the Text Import Wizard
    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Text-Import-Wizard-c5b02af6-fda1-4440-899f-f78bafe41857?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US which
    will let you choose the Text data type for the column in question so that
    it preserves the leading zero.

Thanks,
Giovanni

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 11:14 AM, Clayton Sims csims@dimagi.com wrote:

Amanda,

Unfortunately this issue occurred at the time the data was entered.
CommCare has a special data type (Phone number or numeric ID) that can be
used for collecting "numbers" where the specifics of the string entered
(IE: 010 v. 10) are important. The normal "number" data input assumes that
only the actual number being entered needs to be retained. There's not an
easy way for the data to be fixed in our DB retroactively.

You can use excel to Pad the input data to add leading Zeros to the input
data, however,
padding - Add leading zeroes/0's to existing Excel values to certain length - Stack Overflow
s-0s-to-existing-excel-values-to-certain-length

which can correct the issue directly inside of the export.

-Clayton

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 4:25 AM, Amanda Agar gzf4.1over@gmail.com wrote:

Hi
Can anyone help? I have built a form and collected data; in the form I
have asked for the interviewee's telephone number using the telephone
number question but when I export the data the 0 is missing from the
beginning of the telephone number. How can I get the data to export
including the 0 at the start of the telephone number?
Thanks
Amanda

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