When businesses are choosing a form app or website, there seems to be a perception regarding Google Forms – it is too basic. This is unfortunate, as it is a pretty strong tool if you know how to find all the features. Here are a bunch of advanced Google Form tricks or features that enhance the Google Forms capability and functionality.
As technology has expanded, the way we deal with things professionally and personally has changed. Today, almost every business, and institutes opt for digital forms or form apps to collect data and survey information. Digital form is a better alternative to tried and tested pen-paper method, which is quite time-consuming and requires human hours. Google Forms is one of those most popular and now even one of the most-used digital forms for most businesses.
Go ahead, and make a new Google form so that you can practically look at all the Google form tricks or features for yourself while I explain theoretically here.
Advanced Google Form Tricks
[Note* We have for you this article in video format. If you are interested in watching the video and where are the features you’ll find it in Google Forms. Just check out our video below!]
If Google Forms is not your go-to form maker, then it’s time to change that thought. There are many interesting and advanced features that are hidden inside and you may not find them unless you know what you’re looking for. Or you might sometimes fail to know the purpose of it.
Let’s move further and look into the different google form tricks and advanced features:
1. Insert Multiple Sections or Pages
Creating long forms for any purpose can be a bad idea. However, you can make your form manageable and well-organized for respondents, it’s possible to add multiple pages by inserting sections. It will allow you to segregate your form into different sections with different categories, making it more approachable for respondents.
You can also at the start of the form in the description mention how many total sections there will be so that respondents will not be going blindly in the form.
Go to the last block on the sidebar and click on the vertical box ‘Add Section’ button from the toolbar. A new section will be presented, you can add a header and description to each section. This is the best way to separate certain kinds of questions or for specific types of respondents.
2. Auto-Grade Your Quiz
Another Google form trick is specifically for teachers. You might be well aware of the use of the form for the Google forms test and quiz. However, you might be or might not be so in-tune with the advanced feature of the quiz. That is, you don’t have to grade students manually anymore, Google forms can do it automatically for you.
You can make a quiz through the pre-built Quiz template under the ‘Education’ template. Or to set this up, you can switch to the ‘Settings’ tab and enable ‘Make this a quiz.’ Further options will then appear beneath it, like whether you want respondents to see their grades immediately after submission, point values for each question, correct answers, and more. This way they can self-check and self-correct their mistakes while saving you a lot of time.
Besides, for each new question, you can either set default point values or assign point values. Moreover, provide feedback for correct and incorrect answers.
3. Select Response Destination
In Google Form, you can choose where to save responses. If you are a Google form user, then you will know that your form responses can be saved in a Google spreadsheet or keep them in the form itself. However, you may not know which one to choose and why.
Besides, if you are new or haven’t much explored Google forms, then this google form advanced features is something to look for.
To choose a response destination:
- Head over to the ‘Responses’ tab
- Click on the three-dot icon – ‘፧’
- Then, click on the ‘select response destination. Here, you can create a new spreadsheet or save your responses as another tab to an existing spreadsheet that you can choose from the pop-up window that will appear for Google Sheets.
Apart from this, if you want to quickly create a spreadsheet for your form responses then you can easily do that with the ‘green create spreadsheet icon’. Or to download to your device, go to three-dots > Download responses (.csv). Using a spreadsheet to store results for backup and if you want to manipulate it is ideal. You can also save all the forms responses to individually in Google Sheets.
However, if you have a larger number of responses, it’s better to keep the results in form.
4. Receive Email Notifications for Submissions
Pro tip: Don’t try this google form trick if you will receive or expect to receive tons of responses. This google form advanced feature lets you stay updated with all the responses you have received every time a new response is submitted. Of course, it will flood your inbox, but on the good side, you’ll stay alert with every response.
In just two clicks, you can set up the email notifications for submissions if you would like – Go to Responses > three-dot icon menu, and select ‘get an email notification for new responses’.
The responses you’ll get on the email address that you have used to log in to your Google Forms or G-drive.
5. Add Conditioning Logic
Sometimes you don’t want every question to be answered by every respondent. Or either you want to gather additional information depending on the answers. That’s where one of these google form tricks comes into the picture. Conditioning Logic or Logic Branching is a showy way of describing that your respondents based on the answer they give will be redirected to a complimentary and particular question.
For example, if you choose a certain Indian origin region like North India then Google Forms will redirect you to the section that is created only for North Indian origin respondents. You’ll automatically skip other questions/sections that are meant for a specific category.
Before telling you the steps, you must keep in mind that only for multiple-choice and dropdown type questions can you add conditioning logic. Now moving further, click on the ‘More’ (three-dot icon) at the bottom right corner of every question and select ‘go to section based on the answer.’
Then select from the dropdown box beside each option where you want them to direct if opted the particular answer. You can also have them submit the form instead of going further.
6. Use Scripting
If you know to code and know-how write a script or want to utilize one that you might have found on the web. Then, there’s away! There are no scripts and doesn’t support scripts per se, but it does have the feature to use scripting if you like.
Click on the Menu icon (three dots) on the top-right, and go to Script Editor. It will open up to the ‘Apps Script’ tab, you can enter your script on the clean slate. Besides, you can also add a library and add a service, once you are finished, just click on the disk icon and save the project.
If you want head over to the Google Apps Script page for some needed help or examples.
7. Add Collaborators
One of the cool google form advanced features is to ‘add collaborators.’ Google Form is flexible when it comes to sharing. It lets you invite others to be co-editors of your form or simply, Google form allows you to collaborate with form building. This Google form trick is the best-advanced feature, especially if you are a teacher or researcher working with your partner together.
You can easily add your partner and let them be part of the form and responses and they can edit it as well. For that, go to the ‘Menu‘ option at the upper right corner, select ‘Add Collaborator’ and add their email id or copy the sharing link.
The admin can also prevent editors from changing access and adding new people. Just go to settings (gear shape) in the add collaborators and disable the option.
8. Embed iFrame to use as a contact form
If you have noticed that there are many websites with a contact us form on the contact webpage and want something like that. Then, it can be easily done through Google Form. If you want to use Google Forms to create a contact form for your website or another purpose where its useful to embed an iFrame of your form then this Google Form trick is useful
Go to the ‘Send’ option to begin with, then navigate to the Embed (< >) icon. Adjust the height and width of the frame, if you like, and click on Copy. You can paste the code, wherever you need it.
9. Get a Pre-filled Link
If you want to send a form with pre-filled answers, then this feature in Google Forms is the one. The pre-filled form makes a big difference for people who wants to fill them out quickly. It assists in the time spent on the completion of the form. For instance, you might want to save the respondent sometime when moving in a multi-form flow, where you will pre-fill some similar or duplicate fields on the next form by using content from the first form. In case of contact details.
To give it a try, follow these steps:
Click on ‘More’ on the top right corner, go to Get a pre-filled link,
Then fill the form out like your respondents would and click on Get Link.
You’ll see the share link message at the bottom, click on ‘Copy Link’ and paste it wherever you want.
10. Advanced it up with Google Form Add-ons
What makes G-suite tools excellent and advanced is the ‘Google Workspace Marketplace,’ where you can find tons of add-ons available. It’s easy to add add-ons for different purposes and make your Google Form advanced.
You can do so by clicking on ‘More’ in the upper right corner and go to Add-ons. A pop-up window will open with addons that work with forms. Check them out and install any of them. Once you have added any add-ons, you’ll find them at the top of the form in puzzle shape.
Add-ons will help you to work more efficiently and create automated systems. There are many good add-ons, here is the one that I know:
- ExtendedForms: It is the best timer for Google forms, add a one-click countdown timer and turn your google forms into google tests and quizzes. It comes with many features like custom branding, and team management – add unlimited users or team members on your Google domain. Further, the ExtendedForms come with an intuitive dashboard where you can see responses graph that shows responses over a duration, respondents’ status, and average response time.
You can also, customize invitation messages and welcome screens. Apart from that, it offers you the ultimate benefit of Google Classroom Integration. You can create classwork right from the ExtendedForms dashboard and automatically import scores from linked Google form to created classwork. Moreover, it also ‘Auto-Submission’ feature that let students’ work be automatic ‘handed in’, and scores will be auto-grade.
It has easy configuration and easy shortcuts that will let you configure the most-used settings inside Google Form, and automatically log in to the dashboard via the in-app settings window. It is one of the best addons of Google forms.
There are so many other Google Form addons that you can check and use to make google forms more advanced.
Conclusion
These are the 10 advanced google form tricks and tips for pro users. There are other basic yet advanced features like adding confirmation messages that respondents see post submission, you can share result summary with respondents, show a progress bar, shuffle question order, collect email addresses, and more. You can find these features from the settings of Google forms.
Check all these google forms tricks or google form advanced features by yourself. And if you find any other tips or tricks then do share them with us. We would love to hear what you have!
