In UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Paper, character fields define where respondents write their responses to numeric and open-ended questions. In scanning-enabled Looks, you define character fields using masked controls. These contain all of the information that the scanning software needs, and you do not need to use a scanning ID character style. However, you need to ensure that the character fields can fit on one page.

Note that Word cannot handle more than about 500 masked controls on a single page (the actual limit may vary from machine to machine depending on system resources, etc.) This limit is usually only reached if you have one or more very large numeric grid questions on a page. When this happens, split the questions onto more than one page.

If a numeric or open-ended Look has a border around the entire question, the character field in which respondents write their answers must be a single closed box. Lines, open boxes, and framed boxes are only valid when there is no border around the question.

The reason for this restriction has to do with the way ReadSoft FORMS Manager searches for answer boxes when you run the Transfer to Scanning Software command to set up the questionnaire as a scanning job in ReadSoft FORMS. For each numeric or text question, UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Paper/Scan Add‑on passes ReadSoft FORMS Manager the co-ordinates of the point at or very close to which respondents will write their answers. ReadSoft FORMS Manager searches for a horizontal line starting at or near this point and follows this line to the end to determine whether it starts and ends at the same location. If the Look uses a closed box, the line starts and ends at the same location giving ReadSoft FORMS Manager the exact location of the printed answer box.

If the question uses lines or open boxes and does not have an outer border, ReadSoft FORMS Manager can not locate a closed box for the question and uses the co-ordinates it received from UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Paper/Scan Add‑on to determine the location of the answer box.

If the question uses lines or open boxes but has an outer border, ReadSoft FORMS Manager escapes from the answer line or box and finds the question border instead. Because the border is a closed box, ReadSoft FORMS Manager assumes that this is the answer box for this question and generates the wrong scanning definition for this question’s answer.

For information on masked controls, see UNICOM Intelligence masked controls.