How to create a bar chart from configurable list widget's answers?

Hello: For my survey, Government Affairs Tracking, I had a question regarding reporting. I tried to create a report, but the data wasn't displaying how I was envisioning. I was hoping to create more of a bar chart for the Working Group category on the bottom axis with the amount of hours on the left hand side. Is that possible?

Hi Denise,

Thanks for reaching out to Jotform Support. I'm an AI assistant. I'll do my best to help you until someone from the support team is available.

You can create a bar chart report using Jotform Tables. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open Jotform Tables and go to your form's submissions.
2. Click the column menu for the Working Group category.
3. Select "Summarize with a chart" to generate a visual report.
4. Change the chart type to a bar chart using the chart icon.
5. Adjust axes to have the Working Group on the bottom and hours on the left.

This will allow you to visualize the data as you envisioned. You can also customize reports further if needed.

Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

Best regards,
Jotform Support

Hi Denise,

Our Visual Reports don’t directly let you break out and chart individual answers from a Configurable List widget, because all the widget’s fields get stored in a single cell per submission. That’s why your Working Group and Hours values aren’t lining up nicely in a bar chart.

If you want that kind of chart with Working Groups along the bottom and total or average hours on the side, you’ll first need to split the widget data into separate columns. You can do this by downloading your submissions to Excel, using the Split function to separate the values into columns, then creating a pivot table and adding a bar chart from there.

You can easily download your data from Jotform Tables as a CSV, Excel, or PDF file. Let me show you how:

1. On your My Tables page, hover over the form whose data you want to download, and click on View Table.
2. On the upper-right side of the page, click the on Download All button. 
3. Now, select Download as CSV, Excel, or PDF to download your data.

You can also check out our How to Download Form Submissions as Excel, CSV, or PDF guide for more information.

Let us know if you need any other help.

Hello: Thank you for the response. I am a bit confused with the separating, and what do I do after it is downloaded. Is there a better way then to set it up?

Hi Denise,

The Configurable List widget has its own limitations, and it stores multiple fields in a single cell per submission, Jotform's built-in Visual Reports cannot directly chart individual answers from it. To create a bar chart with Working Groups on the bottom axis and total or average hours on the left, you will need to separate the widget data into individual columns first. Here’s how to proceed after downloading your data:

1. Download your form submissions from Jotform Tables as an Excel or CSV file.
2. Open the downloaded file in Excel or a similar spreadsheet program.
3. Use the Split function in Excel to separate the Configurable List data into separate columns based on delimiters such as commas or line breaks so that each Working Group and its corresponding hours are in their own columns.
4. Create a pivot table from the separated data to summarize the total or average hours per Working Group. This guide will show you how to create a pivot table on Excel.
5. Insert a bar chart based on the pivot table, setting the Working Groups along the horizontal axis and the hours on the vertical axis.

This method allows you to visualize your data exactly as you want, with Working Groups on the bottom and hours on the left side of the bar chart. Alternatively, within Jotform Tables, you can use the Summarize with a chart feature on individual columns to create simple bar charts, but this won't work directly with Configurable List widget data unless it is split into separate columns first.

Give it a try and let us know how it goes.