Group open-ended survey responses into themes
Turn hundreds of free-text answers into themes you can count and chart. Free, no sign-up.
or drop it here
CSV, Excel, Parquet or JSON. Up to 100 MB or 100,000 rows per file.
No file handy?
1. Columns to read
Pick the columns that help decide. They're read in the order you click them.
Numbers and dates can help, but they're less useful than text: they're read as words, so there's no math or date comparison. Include a text column for the best results.
2. What to decide for each row
3. Review
Preview first to check the results. Previews are free and don't count toward your daily limit.
Not quite right? Reword the question, describe the categories more clearly, or choose different columns, then preview again.
Preparing your file…
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Always free. For your privacy, we don't keep anything: your file and results are deleted automatically within an hour.
Open-ended questions get the most honest feedback, and the least analysis, because coding answers into themes by hand is slow. Researchers call this "coding" qualitative data; with a long survey it can take days.
Export your responses, describe the themes you're looking for, and each answer gets a theme and a confidence score. Then count the themes in a pivot table to see what people talk about most.
How to do it
- Export responses from Google Forms, Typeform, SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics as CSV or Excel.
- Pick the column for the open-ended question. Each question is best run on its own.
- List your themes, preview, then download and summarise the new Theme column with a pivot table.
Example
Real results from the sample file (survey responses). The last row shows a case the model wasn't sure about, flagged for you to check:
| What could we do better? | Theme | Confidence | Needs review |
|---|---|---|---|
| The checkout page kept timing out on my phone. | Bugs & reliability | 100% | |
| Prices went up again and I'm not sure it's worth it anymore. | Pricing | 100% | |
| Support answered in minutes and fixed my issue. | Customer support | 94% | |
| Love the new design, much easier to find things. | Ease of use | 54% | Yes |
Tips for better results
- Not sure what the themes are yet? Read 30 or so answers first, then write the list. Keep "Other" on to catch what you missed.
- If an answer often covers two themes, run separate yes/no questions per theme instead ("Does it mention pricing?").
- Look at the "Other" rows after a run; they often reveal a theme worth adding.
Questions
Can one answer belong to several themes?
Each "Pick a category" question gives one main theme. For several at once, ask one yes/no question per theme, such as "Does this mention pricing?".
How many responses can I process?
Up to 100,000 rows per file. A few hundred responses take seconds; tens of thousands take a few minutes.
Is my survey data kept?
No. Files are held in memory only and deleted automatically within an hour.
More things you can do
- Categorize bank transactions
- Sentiment analysis in Excel
- Classify support tickets
- Score sales leads
- Detect spam submissions
- Categorize products
Or classify your spreadsheet any other way you like.