What is an ESRI shapefile?

A shapefile is a geospatial file format containing vector data, such as polygons (areas, borders), lines and points. 

Are there any requirements for the shapefile?

The coordinate system of the shapefile does not matter, but we recommend keeping shapefiles below 500 kb in size and making sure that the combined size of shapefiles on the same page stays reasonable. 

The shapefile(s) should be uploaded to Maptionnaire in a compressed .zip folder that contains the following files: .shp, .shx, .dbf, .prj.

Upload a shapefile to Materials:

  1. Go to Materials. Click Map and choose ESRI shapefile  from the drop-down menu. 

    Screenshot 2025-02-11 at 4.24.47 PM.png

  2. Upload the compressed shapefile folder. 
  3. Give the shapefile a Public title – it will be shown when the respondent hovers their cursor over the map.
  4. If you want to add labels to the features, select the column under which they are listed in Label key and turn on Show feature labels. Consider turning on Declutter labels and editing the visual appearance of the labels.
  5. Set the color, size and opacity of the features (style is automatically transferred to Maptionnaire). If the zip folder contained multiple shapefiles, you can select different visualization for each of them.
  6. Click Save to finish.

Add the shapefile to a questionnaire:

  1. Go to the questionnaire page > Map and layout.

    Screenshot 2025-02-11 at 3.21.35 PM.png

  2. Select Map as the page type. Choose a background map from System maps or Own basemaps.

    Screenshot 2025-02-11 at 3.28.58 PM.png

  3. Select the shapefile from the menu under Map overlay.
  4. Set the Default map view and preview the page.

Looking for information about how to download map responses as shapefiles? See this article.

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