Hi,  re the ‘Deprecation of Spell Checker’.  Are the links in the above text meant to take you to a page which provides a reason and explanation of what’s happening?  It doesn’t seem to.  Therefore please can you explain the decision on this as this seems such an important feature.  What is the alternative?

Thanks

Rod Pestell

Hi ​@Rod_Pestell ,

Great questions! I understand the linked update may be confusing so I brought your question up the team that owns the Product Release Notes, this is what they told me:

“The support site covers current product functionality, so this feature has been removed from the site since it is no longer available in Qualtrics. Our product team decided to deprecate this functionality due to low usage and the ability of native web browsers to perform spell checks. As long as it’s enabled on your browser, misspelled words will be flagged and can be right clicked to have spell check run on them.

Here’s what that looks like in Google Chrome:

If you’re having trouble using spell check in your browser, please contact our Support team via the Support Portal so they can investigate.”

Hi ​@AlonsoC ,

Thanks for the reply.  When i last tested things out, I don't think chrome nor edge spell checkers could check choices if for example you copy pasted them in from another source, nor when fields were not active.  I think there were other instances but can't quite recall the scenarios in full but to not be able to run a spell check without having to click into every single form and choice will certainly be an issue in my opinion.

The spell checker option also doesn't offer a uk proof option which in some repsects causes issues for me so I've had to resort to using ms word sometimes to be sure I'm spelling things correctly.

I would also like to know how the internal team came to the conclusion that not having a spell checker was the right choice and would improve productivity?  Perhaps it would be possble to Invoke the browser's spell checker itself a but to force it to cycle through all the fields instead of you using your own functionality?

But either way i am pretty confident in that if you asked your clients whether they would want an ability to spell check within the survey (with the ability to check non active fields) the answer would be a resounding 'yes'.  One of the key problems I've observed is that as soon as you enter into a field, or a choice, the system then thinks you have made a change and you need to publish the survey again.

Please can you have a think about thes points

Thanks

Rod Pestell

Hi ​@Rod_Pestell ,

Just want to take a moment to confirm that I’ve shared your feedback with the product team responsible for the feature update. They emphasized that low usage was the primary reason behind the deprecation of the feature. However, they do find your insights valuable and assured me they will consider it when introducing new functionalities. 

If you have any further questions/comments, don’t hesitate to reach out via DM.

Best,

Alonso

​Hi @AlonsoC,

I have attached a video to illustrate the problem.  Scale this up to a survey with many options and many questions and I’m pretty sure you will understand my point.  The browser’s spell checker feature does not replace the functionality we had and it will be a very very time consuming to click into every single question text and choice to check the spelling.

Also, in what context is this low usage?  Per responses? well yes it is but that’s the wrong comparison to make.   Perhaps you can share some stats.  Number of official surveys created and distributed (ie excluding all the test ones people make before finalising their surveys) in the UK  against how many of them were spell checked. 

I would also state that once you’ve done a spell check you won’t need to do it again unless you change something.  I can categorically say that I use the spell checker every time I create a survey but once done, I don’t need to spell check them again / every day.

Can we do a poll here I wonder - How many people would find a functioning spell checker useful?

Will await your reply

Thanks

Rod Pestell

Hi ​@Rod_Pestell ,

Thanks for the detailed notes and attachment, I’ve passed them to the product team for consideration. When I hear back with an update, I will post in this thread.