Google Forms to Sheets Guide – Everything You Need to Make Great Forms

No doubt, Google Forms is the go-to app for gathering data. Whether you want to collect customer feedback, conduct a survey, or need to create a checkout page for your eCommerce store, the tool can help you to easily do all of these and more.

The best part is that Google Forms is free to use! You already have access to the app once you sign up for a free Google Account.

Google Forms integrates seamlessly with other great products from Google, including Docs, Slides, and Sheets. This quick guide will show you everything you need to save your data in Google Forms to Sheets.

How to Create a Form in Google Sheets

The usual way to create a form is from the Google Forms app or navigating to https://docs.google.com/forms. You can start building your form from scratch using a blank form or choose a template to make things quicker.

You can also build your form directly from the Google Sheets app.

Here’s how to do that:

1. Make sure you are signed in to Google and choose Sheets from Google Apps or go to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets.
2. Click on Blank to start a new spreadsheet. If you already have a spreadsheet you want to use, scroll through the files and select it.
3. Click Tools on the menu bar and select Create a form.

This will automatically open a new tab on your browser and link the new Google Forms to Sheets. You can add a new form question in the new browser tab.

How to Create a Spreadsheet in Google Forms

You can create a spreadsheet from Google Forms just as you can build a form directly from a Google Sheets spreadsheet.

Here is how:

1. Open the Google Forms app (make sure you are signed in to your Google Account).
2. Click Blank form to open a new form.
3. Click on the Responses tab. You shouldn’t see any form response at this stage since it is a new Google form, which you haven’t designed or even sent out.

• Click the green Sheets icon on the top right of the form.
• Select Create a new spreadsheet to automatically open a Sheets file where all the responses to your form will be stored.

• Click Create.

This will link the form to the new Google spreadsheet and open the new Sheets file in a new browser tab. As you design your form and add questions, the Google spreadsheet will automatically update to reflect the changes.

View Responses in Google Forms

Opening the spreadsheet associated with your form lets you see survey responses from those that participated in your survey or filled out your Google form.

However, you can also view a Google Form response without closing the Google Forms apps.

Here’s how:

1. Open the form you create in Google Forms
2. Click on the Responses tab in Forms. If your form has any response from those you send it to, you will see the number of responses listed on the Responses tab

• Click the green Google Sheet icon on the top right corner of your form

This will open the spreadsheet where Google stores all the responses to your form.

Note that you can also view responses directly on the form in Google Forms. You can do this by clicking the Individual tab under the Responses tab. Then, click the previous and next arrows to cycle through all the responses. This may not be the most efficient way to view responses, though.

Managing Responses and Spreadsheets

By default, when you create and send out a form, Google collects all the responses and stores them separately in a Google Sheets file on Google Drive. This automatically links your Google Forms to Sheets.

While this can save you the hassles of remembering where the responses to different forms are stored, you may want to choose a different storage destination.

Perhaps you want responses to a particular form to be stored in an existing spreadsheet you already have. Or you may even want to unlink the form from the spreadsheet so that responses will no longer be stored on the spreadsheet. This allows you to delete the form or the sheet without affecting either of the formerly connected files.

Here is how to choose a destination for your responses, unlink a form, and delete responses.

Choose Where to Store Your Google Forms Responses

1. Go to Google Forms and open the form that you want to choose a response destination
2. Click the Response tab
3. Click the More icon (three vertical dots) after the green Sheet icon
4. Click Select response destination

• In the Select response destination dialog box, click Create a new spreadsheet and enter a name for the file. Click Create

If the form is already connected to a spreadsheet, Google Forms will show you the existing spreadsheet. You can also choose to store responses in a different file entirely by clicking the Select existing spreadsheet option and clicking Select.

Unlink Your Form from a Sheet

1. In Google Forms, click the Responses tab
2. Click the More icon and select Unlink form
3. Click Unlink to confirm

You can also unlink your form from Google Sheets.

Here’s how:

1. In Google Sheets, click the pull-down arrow on the Form Responses sheet at the bottom
2. Select Unlink form

• Click Ok to confirm

Delete Responses in Google Forms

1. In Google Forms, click the Responses tab
2. Click the More icon and select Delete all responses
3. Click OK to confirm

To delete individual responses:

1. In Google Forms, click the Responses tab
2. Click the Individual tab
3. Use the previous and next arrows to find the response you want to delete
4. Click the delete icon to erase individual responses
5. Click Yes to confirm

Note that you can also delete a spreadsheet if you no longer want to keep the file. This is similar to deleting all responses in Google Form. However, you need to unlink the form before you delete the spreadsheet.

For a detailed tutorial on how to use Google Forms, check out this post.