| FORMS FOR PROS

Text fields didn't make Google Forms popular. Powerful features did.

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Forms protect your identity

Forms do not reveal the identity of the respondent unless the designer explicitly requests it. This previous post explains it all.

As a designer, you are encouraged to request as little personal information as possible. Always test your own form - let's end manual name and email fields in forms that capture that information anyway.

You can make Forms look nice

Forms do not have to look uniformly blue - customize headers, colors and fonts. You can upload your own header images and images or charts into the questionnaire.

You can use forms with anyone

Google forms has three sharing permissions: You can share with everyone in your company/domain, everyone with a Google account or everyone on the internet. The two "public" options are quite similar: By default, responding to a form is anonymous (see above), so a Google account is not required. And when you select certain options (such as limiting people to 1 response), respondents have to sign in with any Google account.

You cannot limit who responds to a form any further. It is not possible to make a form for only 10 people or a group. In Google Workspace language, Forms always have "everybody with the link can submit".

File uploads do not work with shared drives

Storing data on shared drives is best practice - but unfortunately, storing a Form on a Shared Drive will disable file upload questions. This limitation hasn't changed in years and I have no good explanation for it.

You can pre-populate fields

In Forms, click the menu (...) and select "Get pre-filled link" to see a preview of your form. Anything you fill in will be stored in a URL that you can send to people. You can use this to save others time - and programmers will find many ways for further use.

Forms can be embedded in websites & emails

Google Forms are easily embedded in Google Sites and other systems. You can use them as part of your workflows, so Google Forms becomes a feedback mechanism on websites, quality control on deliverables etc.

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Linking Forms to Sheets (did you know?)

You can view results in Forms, which is great for aggregate charts. For anything else, you want to "Link to Sheets", so all answers are displayed in rows and all questions in columns. But you knew that. Many people don't know that answers are always saved in Forms, never in Sheets. A copy gets saved in Sheets. That means:

• You can unlink a sheet from a form and store answers in a new sheet. Previous answers will be stored again, nothing is lost.

• Deleting a Sheet does not matter (as long as you don't delete the form).

• You can store answers from two forms in the same sheet.

• You can edit the sheet and new answers will still be added correctly. You can rename columns, move them around, annotate and even change previous answers. The ground truth is in Forms, not in Sheets. Also, remember that Sheets logs every edit, so your shenanigans are easily audited.

What happens after they submit?

Depending on your use case, you want to leave a professional "Thank you" note, instructions on how to find further support or what to do next. Forms' default message is "Your response has been recorded" - you certainly can do better than that.

You also want to consider whether people need to submit more than once (by default, they can) and other advanced options.

Stop accepting responses

My last and favorite tip: Under "responses", a simple checkbox allows you to stop accepting responses. In case there are still links to your form, this is a very elegant way of signaling this form is now closed and the process has ended.

Google Forms exemplifies what we love about Google Workspace: It's easy to start with and can handle almost any requirement. It hides complexity very well. It gets even better with other services. No wonder it leads interest in survey tools.

I hope you already have ideas for your next form. Thank you for reading!