# Exporting your answers

**Category:** [RFP Responses](https://help.totalctrl.app/hc/totalctrl/totalctrl-help-center/en-US/categories/rfp-responses)
**Updated:** 2026-10-04

## Back into the buyer's own file

Press **Export answers** on a response. What you get depends on the mode, which is shown on the page before you press it — not discovered afterwards.
### In place (Excel and Word)

We reopen the original file you uploaded and write each answer into the cell or position it belongs in. Fonts, fills, column widths, numbering, and the buyer's own question text are all untouched, because the file is never rebuilt — only written into.

This is what most buyers require. Returning a beautifully typeset document of your own instead of their template is a common reason a submission is rejected.
### Branded template

A tidy document of ours listing every question and its answer. It is the mode for PDF sources, and the fallback whenever a round-trip is not possible. It is HTML so it opens in Word, prints to PDF, and pastes into whatever portal the buyer actually uses.
### What is reported

The export tells you how many answers were written and names anything it could not place — for example a question with no recorded position. A silently misplaced answer is worse than a visibly missing one, because nobody re-checks a file they were told was fine.
### Unanswered questions

These are left alone in an in-place export rather than written as blanks, so nothing the buyer had in the cell is destroyed. In a template export they are marked "Not yet answered" so someone sees them before it is sent.

The file is named *… (answered)* so a completed questionnaire never sits in your downloads folder under the same name as the blank one.

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## Related Articles

- [Limits, plans, and boosters](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-limits)
- [Reviewing, approving, and signing off](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-signoff)
- [Importing answers from past questionnaires](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-import-past)
- [Where answers come from](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-drafting)
- [The answer library](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/rfp-answer-library)

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