Create template from Excel file option removed?

I was surprised by this, so I checked it out in our account.  You’re right that both Word and Excel conversions are gone.  I have used this before, and our sites have as well.  As we mature in usage, we use it less because we have more things already setup as templates, but it is a good feature that shouldn’t be taken away.

On the “Templates” page, we have “Start from Scratch” (blank), Describe Topic (AI), and FInd Pre-Made Templates (Public Library). If you click the Create button at the bottom, you get those 3 (the public library list is displayed on the bottom instead of a button on this page), plus “Convert an image/PDF (beta).”  

Hi @AMINC and @Corey thanks for reaching out and sharing your feedback on this topic. 

We’ve recently upgraded the technology that reads and scans documents so that we can strive to scan more accurately with higher security. 

You can still scan and convert content from word and excel documents but in order to do this we recommend either converting the documents to a PDF or taking an image of the document and uploading that way. Please let us know how you go converting your Excel documents that way so we can make sure we have the data we need to improve this new conversion technology. 

All the best,

Paddy 

Hello! Thank you for the response. I did try converting the Excel into a PDF and also uploading it as an image. However, both methods failed me. For example, the image format did not upload in several tries, i tried both JPG and PNG formats and it always shows an error message reading the data.

In the PDF case… When I used to upload the Excel format the template automatically read the colored cells with bold letters as my sections, which was great, and the automatic response was always “Yes No N/A.” As a PDF nothing of this works for me, everything uploads as a premise/question and the automatic  responses were all Text type. 

Hi @AMINC thank you very much for going to the effort of providing the specifics in the feedback for us. We are actively exploring how we might be able to improve and will keep you in the loop.

All the best,

Paddy