How can I set up pre fill for city/town based on post code? (German/Austria/Switzerland) | XM Community
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How can I set up pre fill for city/town based on post code? (German/Austria/Switzerland)

  • 9 December 2019
  • 6 replies
  • 477 views

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Hey, I am trying to validate addresses entered by respondents within the survey as much as possible. Wondering if anyone could help me. I would like the respondent to be able to enter their post code in and the city/town they live in is pre-populated to minimise errors. Can anyone help?

Best answer by C_Bohn

One built-in way you might approach this is to use a Drill Down question and its subsequent set up. This would require that you populate three columns with "Post Code", "City", "Country". You would then upload this into Qualtrics, as described in the instructions found here.

This way only cities/towns and countries that apply to that post code are shown, while still allowing the respondent to select the appropriate (if needed). I suspect in most cases the post code will only show one city/town and one country, thus limiting and "auto-populating" the appropriate content to those fields.
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C_Bohn
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  • Answer
  • December 9, 2019
One built-in way you might approach this is to use a Drill Down question and its subsequent set up. This would require that you populate three columns with "Post Code", "City", "Country". You would then upload this into Qualtrics, as described in the instructions found here.

This way only cities/towns and countries that apply to that post code are shown, while still allowing the respondent to select the appropriate (if needed). I suspect in most cases the post code will only show one city/town and one country, thus limiting and "auto-populating" the appropriate content to those fields.

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  • Author
  • 5 replies
  • December 19, 2019
Fantastic! Thank you! 😀

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  • Author
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  • December 19, 2019
Ok - one follow up question. Germany has nearly 17000 post codes 😮 but I can only upload spreadsheets for the drill down question of a maximum of 10,000 rows. Any advice on what I can do? Thanks in advance 🙂

C_Bohn
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  • December 20, 2019
@melissa_b One idea might be to ask a question, "Which region of Germany do you live?" and give the options - Bavaria, Berlin, Saxony, Macklenberg-Vorpommern, etc. Then have that question branch into one of 16 questions that contain the post-code drill downs for that region.

If that is too many regions, is there another way to group areas of Germany that respondents would understand - and correctly select?

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  • December 23, 2019
Thank you for that idea! I will try and get the regions from our logistics company so I can make that happen! 🙂 Fingers crossed I can get the info I need!

TomG
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  • December 23, 2019
@melissa_b,

You can register for an account at geonames.org, then use a web service call to the postalcode api from the survey flow to lookup the city based on the postal code. It would look something like this:
!