How to export SurveyMonkey data to Excel for detailed sales analysis

If you’re running sales surveys and want real answers—not just pie charts and dashboards—you need your raw data in Excel. Whether you’re chasing leads, qualifying prospects, or just trying to figure out what makes your customers tick, working with the data yourself beats relying on whatever canned reports a tool spits out. This guide is for anyone who wants to get their SurveyMonkey results into Excel, clean them up, and actually use them for real sales analysis.

Let’s skip the fluff and get straight to it.

Step 1: Know What You Actually Want From the Data

Before you even log in, ask yourself: What are you hoping to find? Are you tracking lead sources? Measuring customer satisfaction by region? Trying to cross-check answers against sales outcomes?

Why this matters:
Survey data can get messy fast. If you don’t have a plan, you’ll spend hours in Excel wondering why you bothered exporting anything at all.

Quick checklist: - What are the key sales questions you want to answer? - Which survey questions map to those answers? - Do you care about individual responses, or just trends?

Write it down. It’ll save you time later.

Step 2: Export Your SurveyMonkey Data

So, you’re clear on what you need. Here’s how to get your data out of SurveyMonkey and into Excel:

  1. Log into SurveyMonkey.

  2. Go to your dashboard and find the survey you want to export.

  3. Head to the “Analyze Results” tab.

  4. This is where SurveyMonkey shows you charts and summaries.

  5. Click “Export All” or “Export.”

  6. You’ll usually find this button near the top right.

  7. Choose “All Responses Data.”

  8. Don’t pick “Summary Data”—that just gives you high-level stats, not raw responses.

  9. Pick your file format.

  10. Select “XLS” or “XLSX.” (CSV works too, but Excel files are less hassle if you use a lot of columns or odd characters.)

  11. Set any filters (optional).

  12. You can export just completed responses, or filter by collector, time range, etc. If you don’t need the partials, skip them—they’ll just muddy the water.

  13. Click “Export.”

  14. SurveyMonkey will crunch the data. If it’s a big survey, give it a minute.

  15. Download your file.

  16. Usually, you’ll get a download link or an email.

Pro tip:
If you’re on a free SurveyMonkey plan, you might hit export limits. Sometimes you can only export 100 responses, or can’t get XLS/XLSX. If that’s you, try CSV, or copy-paste results—but be warned, it’s clunky and you lose formatting.

Step 3: Open and Inspect Your Data in Excel

Don’t assume your data is ready to use. Open up the export and take a hard look.

Common headaches: - Giant header rows. SurveyMonkey loves big, messy headers (sometimes two or three rows). - Weird question wording. Column titles might be your full survey questions, not just “Q1” or “Region.” - Extra columns you don’t need. Time stamps, response IDs, collector info—sometimes useful, often not.

What to do: 1. Delete extra header rows. - Usually, you want just one row of column names.

  1. Rename columns, if needed.

  2. Shorten them to “Region,” “Email,” “Sales Rep,” etc.

  3. Check for merged cells or odd formatting.

  4. Unmerge, clear formatting, and make it a plain table.

  5. Save as a new file.

  6. Don’t mess with your raw export—always work on a copy.

Pro tip:
If your survey had “Other (please specify)” answers, those often end up in separate columns. Watch for these—they can trip up your analysis later.

Step 4: Clean Up the Data

Raw survey exports are almost never analysis-ready. Here’s how to get them into shape without losing your mind:

A. Remove Junk Columns

  • Delete columns you don’t need (like “Collector,” “IP address,” or metadata unless you care).
  • If you’re not analyzing open-ended comments, hide those columns for now.

B. Standardize Text Answers

Survey responses aren’t always consistent. “USA”, “United States”, “U.S.A.”—all different, but mean the same thing.

  • Use Excel’s “Find & Replace” to standardize common answers.
  • For dropdowns or multiple-choice, check for typos or stray spaces.

C. Handle Missing Data

  • Blank cells happen. Decide how you want to treat them—ignore, fill with “N/A,” or exclude those rows.

D. Convert Dates and Numbers

  • SurveyMonkey sometimes exports dates as text. Use Excel’s “Text to Columns” or date functions to fix this.
  • Same for numbers—make sure numeric columns are actually numbers.

E. Set Up Filters

  • Add a filter row (Ctrl+Shift+L). Makes sorting and slicing way easier.

Pro tip:
Don’t waste time making it perfect before you start analyzing. Clean up as you go, once you see what matters.

Step 5: Do Your Sales Analysis

Here’s where you actually get value. What you do depends on your goals, but a few patterns come up again and again:

A. Basic Pivot Tables

  • Example:
    Find out which sales channels drive the most leads.
  • Select your data, insert a Pivot Table, and drag “Lead Source” and “Sales Rep” as needed.
  • Sum up responses, average satisfaction scores, or count unique emails.

B. Filtering and Segmentation

  • Filter by region, product, or sales rep to spot patterns.
  • Compare results from different campaigns.

C. Charts and Visualizations

  • Don’t get fancy for the sake of it.
  • Bar charts, line graphs, and scatter plots are enough for most sales questions.
  • Pie charts? Use sparingly—people are bad at reading them.

D. Cross-Referencing With Other Data

  • If you have sales data in another sheet, use VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP to match survey responses to actual sales.
  • This is where the real insights show up—like seeing if certain answers predict bigger deals.

E. Spot Trends Over Time

  • If your survey includes dates, plot them to see if satisfaction or lead quality changes month to month.
  • Watch out for seasonal effects or one-off spikes.

What to ignore:
Don’t get lost in the weeds. If you’re not going to use a metric, don’t spend hours calculating it.

What Doesn’t Work (and What to Watch Out For)

A few things that sound smart but usually aren’t worth your time:

  • Over-automating:
    There are tools that promise “seamless” integration between SurveyMonkey and Excel. Most are more trouble than they’re worth unless you’re exporting data every day. For occasional analysis, manual export is faster and less error-prone.

  • Third-party connectors:
    Be careful with plug-ins that claim to sync survey data to Excel. They often break, require extra setup, or cost money for basic features.

  • Obsessing over formatting:
    Your data doesn’t need to look pretty—just make it readable and consistent.

  • Leaving PII exposed:
    If your survey collects emails or names, be careful who you share the file with. Remove or anonymize sensitive data if you’re sending it around.

Keep It Simple, Iterate Often

Exporting and analyzing your SurveyMonkey data in Excel isn’t rocket science, but it does take a bit of upfront effort. Don’t overthink it—focus on the questions that actually move the needle for your sales team. Clean up your data just enough to answer them. If you need more, you can always come back and refine your process.

The best analysis is the one you actually finish—and use.