Known issues with the CDP Portal and questionnaires

This article is for all Disclosers and lists common issues and limitations of the CDP Portal and questionnaire pages. It also provides tips for managing issues. Please look through and attempt the steps below, then if you are still having issues, please contact CDP for more support. Please note the below issues are only affecting some users and may not apply to you.

For information on updates Disclosers may need to be aware of relating to the reporting guidance of the questionnaires and scoring methodologies, please refer to the following CDP document.


Contents

• Logging in/setting up your Discloser Portal

• Questionnaire progress not saving; error message keeps appearing.
• You have not received an invitation link to access the Portal.
• Some VAT numbers are not being accepted even though the VAT number is valid.
• Error messages appearing when attempting to access the Portal.

• Questionnaire Portal

• Questionnaire progress not saving; error message appearing.
• Rows in a matrix question cannot be removed after your initial submission.
• No automated submission confirmation email received.
• Your questionnaire completion percentage (%) has changed during or after submission.
• You cannot access or view attachments in the questionnaire Portal.
• Updates made to an organization’s name are not being reflected in the questionnaire Portal.
• Difficulty removing file attachments using Windows.

• Excel Import

• The Excel import feature does not accept negative numbers in the latitude/longitude fields.
• Word Export
   
• Requesting Member information is missing in the exported questionnaire.
• Word cannot open the downloaded questionnaire export file.
• Some symbols/characters may not show in the Word export.
• Dates appear wrong in the Word export file.

Logging in/setting up your Discloser Portal

Issue: Questionnaire progress not saving; error message keeps appearing.

When completing the questionnaire, you may experience several error messages popping up in the far-right hand side of your screen regarding issues with the autosave feature.

Workaround:  If you see the error message listed above, please stop adding answers to the questionnaire, copy your latest updates, and then refresh the page. This will allow your data to synchronize and save as expected once again. Once you have refreshed the page, you can paste the copied responses back into the questionnaire.

Fix: CDP’s engineering team is currently investigating a resolution; as required, we will provide further updates as soon as possible.



Issue: Some VAT numbers are not being accepted even though the VAT number is valid.

When making an invoice payment on the Portal, you may find that on the ‘Invoice Details’ page within the ‘Billing address’ section, the EU VAT number field is showing the following error message “VAT number is invalid”, even when the VAT number is valid.

Workaround: For any payments where a valid VAT number is being rejected:

• try changing the VAT number in the “EU VAT number” field to a random 10 digit number,
• click away from input field,
• change the VAT number back to the correct number,
• click the ‘Check VAT’ button.

You should then be able to proceed and complete the payment on the Portal.

Please see our article on paying the CDP admin fee for any further guidance on completing the admin payment.

Fix: CDP’s engineering team is currently investigating a resolution; as required, we will provide further updates as soon as possible.



Issue: Error messages appearing when attempting to access the Portal.

When signing in to your CDP Portal account, you may encounter one of the following access issues. Access issues can be caused by a number of factors such as firewalls, ad blockers, VPNs, proxy whitelists, network protection systems, security filters and more. 

Workaround: Please see the following troubleshooting suggestions.
 

1. Speak to your IT team to check for blockers on the network and whitelist relevant CDP domains. We recommend whitelisting the following domains in your firewall and/or other relevant network protection systems:  

We also recommend getting the following email addresses whitelisted so that you can access verification links and reset passwords:

• msonlineservicesteam@microsoftonline.com – Emails that come from Azure.
• mail@cdp.net – Activation mails come from this email address.

2. Conduct a hard refresh of your browser. In most PCs and browsers, you can hold down Ctrl and click the Reload button or hold down Ctrl and press F5. This will force your browser to load the site from the server, rather than the cache. 
    
3. Ensure ad blockers are turned off in your browser and elsewhere in your operating system. You can find instructions online about how to do this for various browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge and others, on Mac or PC. 
    
4. Disable or turn off your work VPN on your computer. If you have enabled a VPN on your computer, disable or turn it off temporarily on your computer and attempt to sign in to your account again. 
    
5. Allow popups for our site. You can find instructions online about how to do this for various browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge and others, on Mac or PC. 
    
6. Try resubmitting your questionnaire setup. For further instructions please view our article on resubmitting your questionnaire setup.
    

1. 1. Please wait up to five minutes for the email to deliver. This process may not be immediate, particularly during periods of busier traffic on the CDP website.
       
2. 2. Please check your spam and junk folders to ensure that the email is not mistakenly there.
       
   3. If another member of your organization has access to the Portal, please ask them to resend the invite. This can be done by navigating to the ‘Team members’ page after clicking the ‘Invite team members’ button on the left navigation panel. Navigating to the ‘Invited tab’, finding and clicking anywhere on the row of the invitee, opening their user’s details page and clicking the red ‘Resend invite’ button at the bottom.
       

If after the attempts listed above you are still unable to find your invitation link please raise a case with the category ‘I have a technical issue’ and subcategory ‘I cannot access my organization’s account’ to ensure your case goes to the right team.

Fix: The engineering teams are actively monitoring our automated email journeys. There are no known issues with email sending.



Questionnaire Portal

Issue: Rows in a matrix question cannot be removed after your initial submission.

Some matrix questions within the questionnaire may require Disclosers to report data in multiple rows. This can be achieved by using the ‘Add row’ button on the bottom left-hand side of the question. Disclosers are able to remove rows only before they have made their initial submission of the questionnaire. If you need to amend the questionnaire after it has been submitted by the Discloser Submission Lead, it will no longer be possible to delete rows that have been added in response to matrix questions.

In column ‘Actions’ of the matrix question, the bin icon is greyed out for rows added prior to submission and cannot be clicked. The message ‘To remove answers from this row, delete content from individual cells’ is displayed, as shown below.

Workaround: Disclosers wishing to remove matrix rows while amending their questionnaire, should remove the answers within the row instead. Deleting all the content from the individual cells.

You will only have the option to remove the matrix rows that have been added before your initial questionnaire submission. Once submitted, rows can still be added in amendments state however it will not be possible to remove them once added.

Fix: This issue will not be fixed for the 2025 disclosure cycle; please follow the steps above if you need to remove matrix rows after initial submission.



Issue: No automated submission confirmation email received.

Workaround: There is no need to take any action – no automated submission confirmation emails are being sent this year, instead the following submission screen will act as your initial confirmation of your questionnaire submission. The Discloser Submission Lead will also receive a confirmation email on the Friday following the submission date.

If no confirmation email is received the Friday following your submission, please raise a case with the category ‘I have a technical issue’ and subcategory ‘I would like support on my questionnaire response submission’ to ensure your case is picked up by the right team.

Fix: We will continue to iterate and improve email journeys prior to the 2026 disclosure cycle.



Issue: Your questionnaire completion percentage (%) has changed during or after submission.

Questions with incomplete matrixes that have been marked as answered or reviewed by Disclosers may cause a change in completion percentage.

On refresh, after submission, or anytime a user navigates to their questionnaire the conditions on matrix questions are re-evaluated which may result in the question status changing back to ‘In progress’.

Workaround: If you notice a change in percentage completion, check your response and ensure that you have entered all the data you wish to submit.

Fix: This issue has been picked up by the engineering teams who are actively investigating a resolution.



Issue: Users are unable to open or view attachments in the Portal.

Any questions with attachments where a file is uploaded into the Portal will only indicate that there is an attachment and not allow Disclosers to access or download the attachment once it has been uploaded successfully to the question.

Workaround: There is currently no workaround. Disclosers must ensure that the file they are uploading is the correct one as there will be no way of doublechecking it once it has been uploaded.

Fix: CDP’s engineering team is currently investigating a resolution; as required, we will provide further updates as soon as possible.



Issue: Updates to the organization name are not reflected in the questionnaire.

After you have raised a case through the Help Center to update your organization name and this has been completed you may find that the updated name is reflected in the Portal as your account name in the left navigation panel and within your organization details page but the new name is not reflected within the questionnaire Portal or the Word export.

Workaround: In order for this update to be reflected in the questionnaire as well, the Discloser Submission Lead will need to edit and then resubmit their questionnaire setup. No changes to the questionnaire setup are needed, the only requirement is that the Lead resubmits. For further instructions please view our article on resubmitting your questionnaire setup.

Once the questionnaire setup has been resubmitted, the questionnaire (including the Word export) will now have the correct name on it. Upon response submission the correct organization name will also be passed to Scoring and any relevant Data Products.

Fix: This issue will not be resolved within the 2025 disclosure cycle; if you are impacted, please follow the steps above.



Issue: Difficulty removing file attachments using Windows.

When you attach an invalid file, such as a .png or .mp4 video, to a question you may struggle to remove it if you are using Windows.

Workaround: You will need to click on the ‘X’ button twice to remove the invalid attachment when using Windows. This is not the case when using a Mac where the invalid attachment can be removed with a single click instead.

Fix:  CDP’s engineering team is currently investigating a resolution; as required, we will provide further updates as soon as possible.



Excel Import

Issue: The Excel import feature does not accept negative numbers in the latitude/longitude fields.

Certain questions of the questionnaire can be answered by Disclosers through the ‘Excel Import’ feature. The specific questions and instructions on using this feature can be found in our how to import article. Disclosers may find that they are unable to import an answer through this feature if they are attempting to import negative latitude/ longitude values into a question. This issue occurs may occur for the following questions:

• 1.8.1, 7.17.2, 9.3.1 for Corporates,
• and 3.1.3 for CSTAR.

Workaround: To resolve this issue, Disclosers should import positive numbers only into the answer for latitude / longitude fields and then edit the values to negative in the question after they have been uploaded in the Portal directly. Further instructions on editing boxes can be found in our article on navigating the questionnaire.

Fix:  CDP’s engineering team is currently investigating a resolution; as required, we will provide further updates as soon as possible.



Word Export

Issue: Requesting Member information is missing in the exported questionnaire.

You may find that in your Word export of the questionnaire, specifically in Question 7.26 that the Requesting member(s) selected do not appear in the file.

Workaround: There is no current workaround for this issue but Disclosers should note this issues only relates to the exported document, the answers are correctly saved in the Portal. The issue will not affect your score as the Scoring team will receive the correct information.

Fix:  CDP’s engineering team is currently investigating a resolution; as required, we will provide further updates as soon as possible.



Issue: Word may not be able to open the downloaded questionnaire export file

Users may encounter the following error message when trying to open the Word export of their entire questionnaire.

Workaround: This is issue is typically caused by specific data contained within specific sections of the questionnaire that Word cannot interpret. Thus, Disclosers that encounter this issue, should:

1. Download the Word export file as individual sections instead of downloading the entire questionnaire. Please view our article on exporting your questionnaire for further guidance. This may work as the problematic data will most likely only exist in certain places.
    
2. If you find that the error is in a certain section, it is likely that some odd characters/symbols are included in a text box somewhere in that section of your questionnaire. If these are found and removed the next download may open without issue. Please remember to re-enter any removed information after downloading your questionnaire.

• [～] tilde
• [^] caret
• [+] plus
• [÷] divide
• [×] multiplication sign
• [＝] equal sign
• [℃] degrees Celsius
• [＞] greater than
• [＜] less than
• [£] British Pound
• [$] Dollar
• [€] Euro

• Access the CDP Portal as a Discloser
• Navigate CDP's new Portal as a Discloser
• Guidance on entering numerical data in the CDP Portal