How to Create Professional Surveys and Forms with Google Forms

Forms

Create your first form in Google Forms

Create a form

• Go to forms.google.com.
• Click Blank form More.
• Name your untitled form.

Add questions

If you’re using a template, you can skip to Update questions.

• Open a form in Google Forms.
• Click Add question.
• To the right of the question title, choose the question type you want.
• Enter the possible answers to your question. To prevent people from not answering, turn on Required.

Update or organize questions

• To move a question, at the top of a question, click Drag.
• To add a description to a question, click More and then Description.
• To add an image to a question, click Add image.
• To add a YouTube video to a question, click Add video Video.
• To delete a question, click Delete.

Tip: To preview your changes at any time, in the top right, click Preview.

Customize your design

Use a theme with your organization’s brand

• In Google Forms, open a form.
• Click Customize theme.
• Under “Themes,” click a theme.

Note: Organization-branded themes appear only if your administrator makes them available.

Create sections

Sections can make your form easier to read and complete. Each section starts on a new page.

• In Google Forms, open a form.
• Click Add section Section.
• Name the new section.
  • Tip:
    • To move questions to a section, at the top of a question, click Drag.
    • To reorder sections, at the top of a section, click More and then Move section.

Change the color or font header

• In Google Forms, open a form.
• Click Customize theme.
• Under “Text,” you can change the font style for headers, questions, and text. Choose the text style you want to edit, then change the font and size.
• Click Close.

Control and monitor access

Allow access from outside your organization

By default, access is restricted to people within your organization. People must sign in with their email address to access your form.

To share a form with people outside your organization:

• Open a form in Google Forms.
• At the top of the form, click Settings.
• Next to “Responses,” click the down arrow.
• Turn off Restrict to users in [your-company.com] and its trusted organizations.

Collect participants’ email addresses

Record the email addresses of people who complete your form. When someone takes your survey, they’ll be asked to enter their email address before submitting the form. Collect verified emails.

Important: Respondents must confirm that their Google Account email address is collected with their response. The confirmation is shown on each page of the form.

• Open a form in Google Forms.
• At the top, click Settings.
• Next to “Responses,” click the down arrow.
• Under “Collect email addresses,” select Verified.

Collect emails manually

• Open a form in Google Forms.
• At the top, click Settings.
• Next to “Responses,” click the down arrow.
• Under “Collect email addresses,” select Respondent input.

Review your form

Test it yourself

At any time, you can preview your form to see how the changes look.

• In the top right, click Preview.
• The preview opens in a new window.
• To edit the form, click Edit or return to your editing window.

Send it to collaborators for review

Before sending your form, you can allow others to review and edit it. Anyone you invite will be able to edit any part of your form, including responses and where they are saved.

• Open a form in Google Forms.
• In the top right, click More More.
• Click Add collaborators.
• Click “Invite people.”
• In the “Add editors” window, add the email addresses to share with others.
• Click Send.

Report abusive content in a form

• You can report abusive content in a form from your computer.
• To report a violation in a form, you can:
• In the bottom left, Help and then Report.
• At the bottom, click Report.
• If you’re an editor, click More More and then Report.
• Choose the type of abuse found in the form.
• Click Send abuse report.

Publish your form and get responses

Publish your form

Before respondents can access your form, you must publish it. When your form is ready to share, you can share it via email, social media, or embed it on a website or blog.

• In the top right, click Publish.
• To select who can respond to the form, click Manage.
• To give respondents access to users, add them to your form.
• Click Share.
  • Optional: To notify respondents, click Notify these respondents.
    • You can also include a message.
• Click Publish or Publish and notify.
  • Optional: Under “General access,” you can give access to anyone with a link or to specific audiences.
• Click Done and then Publish.
  • Once your form is published, in the top right, it will show “Published.”
• To change publishing options, click Published.

Share your form with respondents

• Open a form in Google Forms.
• To share your form with respondents, click Share Add approver.
• Optional: Under “General access,” you can give access to anyone with a link or to specific audiences.
• Enter the names of people or groups.
• To select the access level, next to the respondents’ names, click the down arrow and then Respondent.
  • Optional: To select a date to remove form access:
    • Click Add expiration.
    • In the calendar, select a date.
    • Click Done.
  • Optional: To remove the expiration, click Edit expiration and then Remove expiration.
• If the form is published, an email notification will be shared when you send the form.
  • Optional: For published forms, you can add a message to your email notification.
  • Optional: If you don’t want to send a notification, uncheck the box next to “Notify people.”
• Click Send.

Send your form via email

To automatically send the form in an email notification when you share a form, click the checkbox next to “Notify people.” If you notify respondents when you publish the form, the email sent to them includes the form.

• Tip: You cannot embed a form in an email when it contains:
  • File upload question
  • Linear scale question
  • Image in a question or an option
  • Secure quiz

Share a link to your form

To get the form link for respondents, you can:

• In the top right, click Preview and then Copy respondent link.
• Once you publish the form, click Published and then Copy respondent link.
• In the top right, click Share and then Copy respondent link.
• Tip: You can copy a short link once you publish the form:
  • Click the checkbox next to “Shorten URL.”
  • Click Copy.

Add a form to a website or blog

To embed a form on a website or blog:

• Open a form in Google Forms.
• In the top right, click the More menu.
• Select Embed HTML.
• To copy the displayed HTML, click Copy.
• Paste the HTML into your website or blog.

Get form responses

Open the Responses tab

In Forms, you can view a summary of all responses or look at individual responses in the Response tab. You can also view the form questions by clicking the Question tab. To switch between individual responses, click the person’s email.

Send responses to a spreadsheet

• Open a form in Google Forms.
• At the top, click Responses and then Summary.
• In the top right, click More and then Select response destination.
• Select an option:
  • Create a new spreadsheet: Create a spreadsheet for responses in Google Sheets.
    • When you use your Google Forms data to create a new sheet, Google Sheets will automatically place your data in a table, providing format and structure to your data.
  • Select an existing spreadsheet: To save responses, select one of your existing Google Sheets spreadsheets.
• Click Create or Select.

Stop collecting responses

When you create a new form, collecting responses is automatically turned on. You can pause or stop it. For example, if you find an error after sending a form, you can pause response collection until the error is corrected.

• Open a form in Google Forms.
• In the top right, click Published.
• Change Accept responses from On to Off.
• Click Save.

After you turn this off, you’ll see a message on the “Responses” tab that says “This form is no longer accepting responses.”