# Branches

There may be cases when data you wish to collect within a form does not fall into the hierarchical structure previously described.\
EpiCollect5 provides another method of adding flexibility that we describe as **branches**.\
Briefly, a branch question is a container for nested questions you want to ask more times for a single hierarchy entry.\
For example you might have a form Person, and add a branch question called "Family members". The "Family members" branch will contain sub-questions like "Name?", "Age?" and "Relationship?".

On a paper based form, you usually see something like:

| Name  | Age | Relationship |
| ----- | --- | ------------ |
| Mirko | 39  | brother      |
| John  | 67  | father       |
| Lucy  | 12  | sister       |
| ...   | ... | ...          |

It is dynamic in the way users answering could add none, one or more family members, depending on how many family members they have.

In our previous Schools project example ([see Linking forms](https://docs.epicollect.net/formbuilder/multiple-forms)) we may wish to collect data on each teacher's absences during the year due to sickness.

In this case we would have a question on the teacher form asking the number of episodes of absence due to sickness. Some teachers may answer ‘none’ and some may answer 1, 2, 3 etc.\
Branch forms allow us to define a new form (in this case about sickness (form D)), outside the hierarchical structure, that appears once or more times in response to a the answer in another form.

![](https://3293478884-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F32OIF30CgrNUuRY6IjkW%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-7c64e4824a4e754acdaa6c8c6c1ac8624b0fb4ef%2Fbranches-1.png?alt=media)

Branches can be added like any other question, just drag the branch question into your form:![](https://3293478884-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F32OIF30CgrNUuRY6IjkW%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-8452a3368cf3c9a0b021ed91abfb0716a3db0945%2Fbranches-2.png?alt=media)

Once dropped, type the branch header (required) and click "Edit Branch" to enter the branch editing mode:

![](https://3293478884-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F32OIF30CgrNUuRY6IjkW%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-7177d1bf1b2f6127f5b6d345c5e767e243f715a6%2Fbranches-3.png?alt=media)

{% hint style="warning" %}
You MUST type a header to enable the edit button!

In branch edit mode, just drag any input as usual.

You CANNOT have a branch within a branch. Also, a branch MUST have at least one question to be valid.
{% endhint %}

To exit the branch edit mode, click the left arrow on the top left, to go back to the usual hierarchy form editing.

![](https://3293478884-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F32OIF30CgrNUuRY6IjkW%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-700bb830e4b4c5b4f9eb5e1381d0f234038882e3%2Fbranches-4.png?alt=media)