# Many Option for Choice Question (Dropdown)

**URL:** <https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/many-option-for-choice-question-dropdown/412>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [1 May 2026 15:14 UTC](https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/many-option-for-choice-question-dropdown/412 "2026-05-01T15:14:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![arkar\_than\_win](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aca169/32.png) [@arkar\_than\_win](https://forum.surveyengine.com/u/arkar_than_win)\
**Post date:** [1 May 2026 15:14 UTC](https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/many-option-for-choice-question-dropdown/412/1 "2026-05-01T15:14:00Z")

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Hello Benno,

I am creating a dropdown question to allow respondents to select their suburb. However, I have a very large list of suburbs, and the survey engine seems to limit the number of choices that can added to a single question (around 500).

Is there a recommended workaround for this limitation?

Thank you.

Arkar

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**Author:** ![benno](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.surveyengine.com/benno/32/3_2.png) [@benno](https://forum.surveyengine.com/u/benno)\
**Post date:** [1 May 2026 15:19 UTC](https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/many-option-for-choice-question-dropdown/412/2 "2026-05-01T15:19:25Z")

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Arkar,  
That’s a curly - one. I think the overarching question is - even if you had higher limits wouldn’t this be error prone and difficult for the respondent.

The problem you’ve reallly have is respondents putting in junk responses.

So a couple of suggestions.

1. have a look at the autosuggest tutorial - see at page 5. this has much better user experience and guarantees they answer from the allowed set.

> **[\- SurveyEngine](https://v5-0-0.saas-de1.surveyengine.com/bin/play.pl?PLAYSID=32da7ef5c507b2b19246c2c19df57164)**

1. Break the suburbs into logical groups (\<500) first. say by state or region or even alphabetically.

2. Apply directly to SurveyEngine support to lift this limit. [support@surveyengine.com](mailto:support@surveyengine.com)

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**Author:** ![arkar\_than\_win](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aca169/32.png) [@arkar\_than\_win](https://forum.surveyengine.com/u/arkar_than_win)\
**Post date:** [5 May 2026 08:45 UTC](https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/many-option-for-choice-question-dropdown/412/3 "2026-05-05T08:45:51Z")

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Hi Benno,

Thank you for your response. I think I figured it out. For future users who may face the similar problem, I used drop down ([How To Create a Cascading Dropdown](https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_cascading_dropdown.asp)) and transfer the data using javascript from the source into the data item (similar to the mapping tutorial).

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**Author:** ![benno](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.surveyengine.com/benno/32/3_2.png) [@benno](https://forum.surveyengine.com/u/benno)\
**Post date:** [8 May 2026 11:59 UTC](https://forum.surveyengine.com/t/many-option-for-choice-question-dropdown/412/4 "2026-05-08T11:59:51Z")

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Nice work and thanks for controbuting.