Google Forms is a popular tool for conducting surveys, event registrations, and collecting feedback. It helps us effortlessly manage and streamline various data collection processes. But the real magic happens when you link it with Google Sheets.
Integrating Google Forms with Google Sheets can transform how you collect and organize user data.
Both of them offer an intuitive and user-friendly interface for quickly creating surveys.
Google Sheets helps you keep everything organized and up-to-date. It also comes with a real-time collaboration feature for further analysis.
Together, they make a fantastic duo, offering easy data entry and providing a single place to maintain and analyze it.
In this article, let us discuss how to connect Google Form to Google Sheet. It’s a step-by-step guide, so read the article until the end.
Benefits of using Google Forms
Google Forms is a cloud-based survey administration software that lets users create forms and surveys for collecting user inputs.
Here are a few of the reasons for Google Forms:
- Ease of Use – Google Forms provides a user-friendly interface, making it easy for both creators and respondents to navigate. It is famous as a versatile tool for collecting feedback, conducting surveys, and managing event registrations.
- Accessibility – It is accessible from both mobile and desktop devices. They are perfectly optimized for mobile users. Moreover, Google Forms can be accessed offline where there is no internet connection.
- Affordable – Google Forms is free to use for Google account owners. And, almost every one of us owns a Google account nowadays. In other words, whether it’s you or the users, everyone can access the forms for free. Both Google Forms and Sheets are cost-effective solutions for educational institutions, small businesses, etc.
- Integration – You can easily connect Google Forms with Google Sheets for seamless data management and team collaboration. You can instantly grade quizzes and save a lot of time to generate results. The forms can be embedded in websites, emails, etc., through a shared link.
Apart from the above, owners will be instantly notified via email once the users submit the form.
You will be able to access the responses in real-time as soon as they are submitted.
When can I use Google Forms?
Google Forms helps users optimize workflows to improve the productivity of various business operations.
Here are a few of the scenarios which will make your task run smoothly:
- Collecting data for research studies, academic studies, or volunteer activities
- Gathering job or internship applications
- Collecting purchase orders
- Conducting polls to gather opinions for group discussions
- Obtaining feedback from employees
- Measuring customer satisfaction and identifying the areas of improvement
- Managing event registrations
Once the data is collected, you can transfer it to Google Sheets for further organization and analysis. It allows you access to numerous functionalities of Google Sheets.
How to Connect Google Form to Google Sheet
There are numerous benefits of this integration. You can leverage hundreds of dedicated functions and tools of Google Sheets to organize entries collected using Google Forms.
In this section, we will look at the steps to connect Google Forms with Sheets.
You can either create the Google Form and then link it with Google Sheets or vice versa. Google offers built-in integration tools within both.
We will discuss both ways in the following section.
Let’s get started.
METHOD #1 – Google Forms to Google Sheets Integration
You can use Google Forms as an independent application, where you can go through the responses in the “Responses” tab.
However, if there are several responses from many people, you should save them in Google Sheets. Importing them to Google Sheets can make managing the responses much more accessible.
You may never wish to enter those hundreds of responses in the Google Sheets manually.
It’s both time-consuming and less effective. The good news is importing all the responses automatically in Google Sheets from Google Forms is just a click away.
Let’s see how to get responses from Google Forms to Google Sheets.
STEP #1 – Create A Google Form
Creating a Google Form is a breeze.
You can select from a premade template or create one independently; it’s easy.
For the sake of this article, we will select a template from the Google Forms library as follows:
- Open the Google Forms dashboard by clicking here
- Hover to the upper-rightmost corner
- Click the “Template gallery” link
- Select a preferred template from the list
(Let us go with the first one named “Contact Information”) - Next, once the form is opened, hover to the upper-rightmost corner and click the “Send” button
- A new popup will appear on the screen
- Click the Link icon as shown in the following image
- Press the “Copy” button
A new form is created instantly and ready to collect the responses. You can share it using the link we copied above.
Note that you can choose from any other template and follow me along through the next steps.
STEP #2 – Check Responses
Once your Google Form is created, it’s time to review the responses.
To demonstrate this section, we have created dummy responses.
You can access responses using the “Responses” tab, as shown below. There are 3 responses we created.
Google Forms displays responses in three different ways:
- Summary: This is a quick summary of all the responses represented generally in graphs or charts.
- Question: Responses are organized by each question, allowing you to see what the user has answered to each particular question.
- Individual: It includes individual responses of all the users, displaying the answers to each question submitted by the participant.
Altogether, they offer an excellent way to analyze responses.
But things get complicated when hundreds of users submit multiple questions or fields.
In this case, you leverage built-in Google Sheets integration.
STEP #3 – Link Google Sheets
Due to built-in tools to integrate Google Forms with Google Sheets, this step is a breeze.
Let’s see how:
- Open Google Forms
- Select the “Response” tab as shown below
- Press the three dots on the right-uppermost corner
- Choose the “Select destination for responses” from the list
- A new popup will appear on your screen asking whether to create a new spreadsheet or use the existing one
- Let’s create a new spreadsheet
- Make sure the radio button is ticked before the option “Create a new spreadsheet“
- Enter the name for the new spreadsheet in the empty box as shown below
(Note that Google Forms pick the new spreadsheet name based on the name you used to create the form. In our case, we created a form named “Contact Information” so that the name is automatically being displayed in the empty box as shown above) - Press the “Create” button
That’s done!
To open your newly created Google Sheets, click the “View in sheets” option that appears in the Responses tab of Google Forms. Refer to the following image.
Also, if you want to import the form’s responses to an existing spreadsheet, tick the radio button before the “Select existing spreadsheet” option, as shown below.
It will open a new popup from where you can select the existing spreadsheet to dump the responses. Once done, click the “Select” button. Your existing spreadsheet will create a new tab or sheet to collect the responses.
STEP #4 – Test Integration
Once you finish linking the Google Form with your spreadsheet, it is always a good idea to test it out.
For example, as an event organizer who collects registrations through Google Forms, it becomes crucial for you to test if everything is working fine so that you don’t miss a booking.
It will also let you ensure that all the fields are copied as expected.
So, let’s start the testing of our Google Forms and Google Sheets integration.
New Spreadsheet Test
As discussed earlier, you have two options for collecting the responses.
We will start with the new spreadsheet. But first, let’s open the spreadsheet.
- Open Google Forms
- Click on the “Responses” tab
- Press the “View in Sheets” link
- A new tab will open on your browser, as shown below
As you can see in the above image, three existing entries are fetched after the integration.
Now, let’s submit a dummy response and check if the responses are collected in real time.
- Open Google Form
- Hover to the upper-rightmost corner of the screen
- Press the “Send” button
- A new popup will appear on the screen
- Press the Link icon as shown in the following image
- Copy the link
- Next, open a new tab on your browser
- Paste the link in the address bar
- Fill in the dummy information once the form is opened
- Press the “Submit” button
Your response should be populated in the spreadsheet integrated with Google Sheets.
Now, let us open the Google Sheet to check the same.
Voila! The fourth entry in the spreadsheet is with the information we just submitted.
Existing Spreadsheet Test
This test will be carried out on the existing sheet we used to connect our Google Form.
The steps are almost similar.
All you need to do is check the existing file for the new tab using “Form Responses”.
You may see a set of existing entries, as shown above.
Next, please copy the link to your Google Form, open it in a new tab on your browser, and submit the dummy information. For the detailed steps, please refer to the previous section.
After this, once you return to the spreadsheet, you should see the new entry at the end of the table.
METHOD #2 – Google Sheets to Google Forms Integration
Compared to the previous method, this one is pretty straightforward.
You don’t need to follow a linking process; instead, create a Google Form right from the Google Sheets dashboard.
Here are the steps:
- Create a new Google Sheet by clicking here
- Hover to the main menu
- Click the “Tools” tab
- Select the first option named “Create a new form“
- A new tab will be opened on your browser, and you will be taken to a new Google Form
- Add the fields as per your choice to collect the responses
- Go back to your Google Sheet
- You will see that a new tab or sheet was created to record the responses
(The fields you created will be automatically populated in the tabular form, as shown in the above image. The first field, named “Timestamp”, is the default column created by Google Forms while importing the responses. It represents the time and date for the submitted response)
When you start receiving the responses, you can also see them in the sheet.
We suggest testing the integration before you share or embed your form on the internet. The steps to test the link between Google Sheets and Google Forms are discussed in the previous section of the article.
How to Unlink a Google Form from Your Google Sheet
The two methods to link Google Forms with Google Sheets are pretty straightforward.
But what if you want to unlink them?
It’s also simple!
Here are the steps to unlink Google Forms from Google Sheets:
- Open the Google Form
- Go to the “Responses” tab
- Click on the three-dot menu button
- Select the “Unlink Form” option from the list
- A new popup with a warning message will appear on the screen, notifying you that no responses to this form will be sent to the spreadsheet
- Click the “Unlink” button
Your Google Form is now unlinked from the Google Sheets. No responses will be sent and recorded in your spreadsheet.
FAQs
Q. Does Google Forms integrate with Google Sheets?
Yes, of course. Google offers built-in tools to integrate Google Forms with Google Sheets.
It hardly takes a few minutes to link Google Forms with Sheets. The responses will be synced in real time.
Q. What is the difference between Google Forms and Google Sheets?
Google Forms lets users create online forms and surveys. It allows you to share the form through the link or email, or it can even be embedded on a website.
On the other hand, Google Sheets is an online spreadsheet program. It is used to organize, analyze, and manipulate datasets.
Both of them have different purposes. Google Forms is a simple application used by event organizers, educators, HR managers, etc. On the other hand, Google Sheets has a pretty huge user base.
Q. Can Google Forms pull data from Google Sheets?
No. You cannot import data from Google Sheets to Google Forms. There is no built-in tool or integration available to execute this task.
However, you can go for a few third-party add-ons compatible with both Google Sheets and Forms to pull the data.
Google boasts built-in integration options to import responses from Google Forms to Google Sheets. We have mentioned the steps for the same in the above section of this article.
Q. How do I organize Google Form responses effectively?
Google allows you to link Google Forms with various other apps, including Google Sheets.
The good news is they offer built-in integration for Google Sheets. You don’t need to use any third-party add-on or Apps Script to develop the integration from scratch using a code.
Once the Google Sheets integration is successful, users can collect responses in real time. Additionally, Google Sheets is one of the top spreadsheet programs to analyze and organize data in tabular form.
For the detailed steps to link Google Sheets with Google Forms, please refer to the above section of this article.
Q. How do I analyze Google Forms data in Google Sheets?
Google Sheets is one of the top spreadsheet software of 2023. It boasts hundreds of functions and tools to organize and analyze datasets.
Once you import your responses from Google Forms to Google Sheets, you can use tools such as Pivot Tables, Conditional Formatting, Data Validation, and much more to analyze the responses.
You can also use graphs and charts to prepare comprehensive reports. Google Sheets offers a decent selection of useful graphs for free.
Moreover, you can change the font styles, adjust the cell background color, etc.
To Summarize: Google Forms and Google Sheets Integration
Connecting Google Forms to Google Sheets makes handling responses super easy.
Using simple methods, we’ve seen how to connect Google Forms to Google Sheets. Also, we learned the simple steps to unlink them.
Whether you’re gathering feedback or organizing data, this dynamic duo is the best. Just follow the steps, and you’ll effortlessly make data work for you. It’s like a teamwork shortcut – Google Forms gathers, and Google Sheets organizes.
So, if you want your responses to look more organized, then give this a definite try!
Check out our blog page to learn excellent tips and tricks for becoming a pro at using Google Sheets.