myForms (Excel Data)

Purpose

myForms, in conjunction with our mailto script, allows a web author to create a form that can both email the form results to multiple email addresses and store the data in a "csv" file which can be opened with applications like Microsoft Excel. Again one or more people can view the data stored in the Excel spreadsheet.

Creating the Form

A web author can create the form as they always have. Two additional elements are required in the form. First, the form must post to URL http://myforms.vcu.edu/posts. Second, the form must contain a hidden input field with the name of "HTTP_REFERER" and a value corresponding to your form's URL. For example if your form was located at URL: http://www.vcu.edu/dept/ask.html, then the first two lines of your form would be:

<form method="post" action="http://myforms.vcu.edu/posts">
<input type=hidden name="HTTP_REFERER" value="http://www.vcu.edu/dept/ask.html" />

Creating the myforms csv file

Before you can utilize the form above, you must login into myforms.vcu.edu and create a csv file that will relate to the ask.html form that you just created. The steps are as follows:

1. Go to URL: http://myforms.vcu.edu/forms
2. Log in with your VCU eID and password 
3. If you have created forms before then you will see a list of them, otherwise to begin simply click the link "New form" 
4. Enter the URLs of your 'form' and your 'acknowledgement page' 
5. Click "Create" 
6. To customize who receives the emails and who has access to the spreadsheet, click "Edit" 
7. To add additional email addresses, simply type them in the "Notify" field seperated by commas. 
8. To give additional folks access to the spreadsheet, enter the person's VCU eID seperated by commas in the "Other Owners" field. 
9. Click "Update" to make the changes.

You are now ready to use your form.

Downloading the spreadsheet

To download the spreadsheet to your desktop, you must first log into myforms.vcu.edu/forms and click the 'spreadsheet' link that corresponds to the form that you are interested in. You may also 'Edit' the properties of the spreadsheet as well as 'Erase' the spreadsheet.

Note: At this time, you may not modify the contents of the spreadsheet information stored on the server. You will need to do that on your desktop.