Run an Open text poll


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Use the open text poll to have attendees type in words or longer text. This is especially useful if you want to ask an open-ended question.

 

In this article:

 

Create an open text poll

 

In your Slido event, go to the Live polls tab, select Open text and add your question.
 

Creating an open text poll

 

If applicable, you can also allow the following settings:

  • Allow multiple answers - To allow your participants to submit more than just 1 answer to the question
  • Display respondent names -  To display the participant’s name next to their response
  • Hide live results - To prevent participants from seeing the results right away

 

Setting up an open text poll


Once you’re done, hit Launch to activate your poll instantly, or simply Save it for later. In case you need to make changes to your poll, click the three vertical dots next to your poll and select Edit

 

Run the poll and see how it works for your participants

 

Once you’ve prepared your poll, you can activate it by clicking the green play button (not needed if you hit Launch when creating the poll).

 

You can then open the Participant mode on the left to see how the poll works for your participants.
 

Testing your open text poll through participant mode

This is how the results are displayed in the Present mode:
 

Open text poll results in Present mode

 

Responses are ordered by the time of submission - the most recent ones appear at the very top. If you receive more responses than can fit on the screen, you can scroll down to see the rest.

 

Moderate poll responses

 

If needed, you can delete submitted responses and filter out the irrelevant or inappropriate ones from the open text poll. This helps you capture more valuable results for you and your participants.

 

To do so, hover over the response which you'd like to remove. Once the bin icon appears, click it and confirm with Remove.
 

Deleting submitted entries from the open text poll

 

Please note that the open text poll is limited to 5000 responses to optimise performance.


Curious about more?

 

 


12 replies

In the past, I’ve been able to allow multiple responses to an open text poll while sharing the results. However, now this won’t work. When I share the results, participants are only able to enter one response to the open text poll. They can see all the results but don’t have the option to enter another response. Is this a bug? How can I work around this issue?

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Hi @KCas,

This should still work. Simply enable allow multiple answers in the poll settings of the open text poll in question, and make sure you do not lock voting while the open text poll is active. This way, participants can enter multiple responses to your open text poll even while the results are being shared. 

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need anything else :)

Hi there,

I am trying to create a poll where a statement/question is made to the participants, and they can then use the free text field to submit their thoughts and answers. Ideally I would then like other participants be able to vote or ‘like’ any answers that they see appear on the screen, so we can then rank the answers.  Is this possible?

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Hi @PSC
 

You could run an open text poll which allows free text but if you were looking to rank answers using our polls function, I would suggest using a ranking poll or a word cloud. With the ranking poll, your participants can rank the answers of importance to them personally. With the word cloud, words get bigger as more people select them, so it’s a great visual poll! 

Our Q&A function allows users to upvote answers and even reply to them which might be worth mentioning as another workaround to your use case 😊

Let me know if you have anymore questions, I’d be happy to help! 

Best, 

For open text polls in Slido, is there a way to allow the participant to view the live responses to the poll without first having to submit an answer themselves? 

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Hi @AimeePerez

It isn’t possible for the participant to view the responses without answering the poll in participant mode on their devices. However, if the participant chose not to submit an answer, the presenter of the Slido event can display the results live, which the participant will then see. 

Let me know if you have any more questions, I’ll be happy to help! 

We are trying to run an open text poll that would ask audience members to answer a math problem. When we are testing this, it doesn’t appear that decimal points are allowed/recognized to submit. This is a key point for someone to be able to answer back 2.22 or something along those lines. Is there a suggested workaround for this? We want it to be able to be open answer and not have to default to multiple choice.

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Hey @lflynn,

I just tested this and the open text poll was allowing me to add decimal points - see the screenshots. Would you be able to take a screenshot of your poll so that we can investigate it?

 

 

Hi I'm trying to set up an open text poll where people can vote for the questions they want to see answered by our presenters the most however this doesnt seem to be possible in open text? We want the participants to send in questions during the presentation therefore we can't gather them before and organise a voting poll. Thank you in advance for your help!

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Hey @Laureen,

It sounds like the Q&A would be a better solution for you. This feature lets you collect questions which participants can then upvote.

Hope this helps :)

Is there a limit to the open text poll length of an answer?

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Hi @Huissier conference

For open text, the limit is 10,000 characters. We have an article that includes character limits across Slido that you may find useful! 

hope this helps!

Best, 

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