If you’ve opened a recent Excel export from Survey Automator and noticed small +/- buttons down the left margin, plus numbered 1/2/3 buttons in the top corner, you’re looking at grouped rows in your Excel export. It’s not a bug or a formatting error, it’s Excel’s own Group and Outline feature, and Survey Automator now builds it automatically into every report export.
What You’re Actually Looking At
Every question block in your report, Gender, Age Group, Region, NPS, Satisfaction by Aspect, and so on, gets wrapped in its own collapsible group. Click level 2 at the top, and the sheet collapses down to just the section headers: a clean, scannable list of every question in the report with no answer rows in the way. Click level 3, and every underlying row expands back out, exactly like the flat table you’re used to.
This isn’t something built from scratch for these reports. It’s Excel’s native outline structure, documented directly in Microsoft’s own support pages, the same feature people use to collapse subtotal rows in financial models, applied automatically to your survey data on export.
Why This Might Be New to You
If you’ve exported reports for a while, the older files came out as one flat table, every row visible, no way to collapse anything. The grouped structure is a newer addition. Nothing about the underlying numbers changes, only the layout gained a way to hide and reveal detail.
How to Work With It
To collapse everything to headers only: click the small “2” button in the top-left corner of the sheet. Every question group collapses at once.
To see full detail again: click “3.” Every row reappears.
To collapse or expand just one section: use the individual +/- button next to that group in the left margin, rather than the numbered buttons, which apply to the whole sheet.
To remove the grouping entirely and get back the old flat view permanently: select any cell in the data, go to Data → Ungroup → Clear Outline. This strips the outline structure out completely, leaving a plain table with nothing to collapse.
Why the Platform Adds This
A report with dozens of questions turns into a long scroll once every answer row is visible. Grouping gives you a table of contents view for free, collapse to headers, scan the sections you actually need, then expand just those. It’s a formatting layer on top of the export, not a change to the data itself, and it’s why grouped rows in your Excel export show up by default now.
FAQ
Are the grouped rows in my Excel export a bug?
No. It’s Excel’s built-in Group and Outline feature, applied automatically to every question section in the report.
How do I collapse all the detail rows at once?
Click the “2” button in the top-left corner of the worksheet. Click “3” to expand everything back.
How do I permanently remove the grouping?
Select any cell in the data, then go to Data → Ungroup → Clear Outline. This removes the outline structure entirely.
Does the grouping change any of the numbers or data?
No. It only changes what’s visible at a glance. All the same rows and values are there whether the group is collapsed or expanded.
Can I collapse just one section instead of the whole sheet?
Yes. Use the individual +/- button in the margin next to that specific group, rather than the numbered 1/2/3 buttons at the top, which affect every group at once.
Want to see what a full report export looks like before you build one? Browse our PowerPoint report templates and find a style that fits your project.