Create Google Forms – How To Create Google Forms – Guide

How to create Google Forms and maximize their use is one of the essences of this post. If you have had one or two online surveys and e-registrations where you collected participants’ information online, then,  you would have on one or two occasions used Google Forms. However, if this is your first hearsay on what Google forms are, again, this post will expose you to beginner tips. Will give you guidance on how to use google’s form tool and start building surveys and forms online for free.

But before then, you will need to get familiar with what Google Forms is all about and what it’s used for in detail. Keep exploring taking the step to Create Google Forms account for free.

As we said, this post is a beginner guide to Google forms, but more like it if you have used Google form before or are not new to Forms on Google, you will still pick one or two tips that will help you create effective and easy-to-use Google forms. So, it’s still for intermediate and advanced users of Google Forms.

What Is Google Forms?

By definition, Google Forms is a survey tool, app, program, software, and a web-based platform created and integrated into Google Drive office suite and Google Classroom alongside other survey tools such as Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides.

Basically, Forms is used for collaboration; collecting, and sharing of information or data which also has similar features with Docs, Sheets, and Slides, however, Forms, Docs, Sheets, and Slides work jointly to create an effective survey in that, forms collect data using quarries, quizzes or questionnaires, Sheets is then used to store and populate data collected.

What Can I Do with Google Forms?

There are just a lot you can do with Google forms, though primarily people use it often for creating surveys and contact forms, there is more to google forms than just limiting its function to just creating surveys and contact forms, here are other uses of Google Forms;

• Create and manage event registrations.
• Create a quick opinion poll
• Again, create and analyze surveys alongside features to summarize survey results at a glance with charts and graphs.
• Student Quizzes or Assessments
• Event RSVP, Invites, and event e-Registration
• Documentation of Work activities in cooperating organizations and business settings
• Office Time Off Request
• Create Customer Feedback and Loyalty analysis
• Contact form

Create Google Forms – How Google Forms Creators Collaborate and Share Data/Information

The amazing thing about Google Forms tools is that, you can manage just anything you want to create online and can share links and form created directly or as a downloadable file through email (Gmail, G-suite, Yahoo mail, AOL, Bing, Yandex, and other email service providers, you can also share your form links on social channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, Facebook Messenger Room, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and the rest of other social networking sites.

More so, is that Google forms support multiple collaboration, this simply means that you can work as a group on one form in creating and managing with different roles like admin, owner, and editor.

Google Forms Features

• It is a free online tool, that allows you to collect information easily and efficiently.
• With Google Forms, you can create surveys in a few minutes to ask your clients or collaborators for information about your products or service.
• To start using this tool, you only need a Google account, the same one you need to access Gmail, YouTube, or Google Drive.
• The interface is very easy to use. Any user with average Internet knowledge can create forms using this tool.
• The assistant is simple to use. The What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get interface makes it easy to drag and drop form elements and organize them based on actions or events.
• At the design level, it is possible to choose between a palette of colors, as well as own images as a background.
• Google forms store the feedback received so we can analyze it in detail.
• The forms are integrated with Google spreadsheets therefore we can access to a spreadsheet view of the collected data.
• The general configuration of forms or surveys allows you to collect the recipient’s email address and limit the answers.
• For advanced users, the type of data that can be inserted into a field can be customized using regular expressions. This helps customize the form even more.
• Google forms allow us to see how the survey will look before sending it over to the recipients.
• We can send the form by email, integrate it into our website, or send the link via social networks or any other means.
• With this tool, you can get unlimited questions and answers at no cost, while other survey tools require payment depending on the number of questions and recipients.

From henceforth, in this post, anywhere you see the abbreviation “GF” we are still referring to Google Forms.

To start using GF you will need to create a google account or do a Google form sign-in. we are going to start with Google Account sign-up.

Sign Up for Google Account

To sign up for Forms access, you will need to provide Google with your personal information which is used as your Gmail account profile, here are Google’s Account Sign Up Requirement’

Before signing up on the Google platform to gain a Google mail account (Gmail), you will need to provide certain information. With the below information you can create a google account in under five minutes.

1. First Name
2. Last Name
3. Your to be Gmail Address (You can choose to combine your first and last name).
4. Phone number
5. A password.
6. Date of birth
7. Gender

How to create Account.gmail.com Signup – Gmail Account Creation Procedures

The below instructions will guide you on how to sign up for a Google mail account and as well have access to other Google products. With an internet enable device, visit www.mail.google.com.

1. Locate the account sign-up button and tap on it.
2. Fill in the information listed above in the appropriate required field.
3. You will be prompted to verify your account using your phone number after you are done filling the field.
4. Go through the verification process and you are up with a Gmail account.

Now that you have created an account, you will also need to do a Google Form login before you create forms.

Google Forms App – Google Forms Sign in?

You can either create forms through the Google forms app or use the web version of Google forms from a web browser. Either way, you will be required to sign in to your google account using your account username (Gmail Address) and your password.

1. Visit Google Forms App
2. Click on the sign-in button
3. Enter your Google username and password
4. Click on the login button
5. You will be taken to the Google forms blank page, then you are good to start making Google contact, survey, and quiz forms.

Starting a Google Form – How to Create a Blank Form

To create a form, you must be connected to the internet and have a web browser installed on your device or you have Google’s Form app installed on your mobile phone. After which you can use one of the many ways to make a blank form;

Ways to Make Google BlankForms

1. Visit www.docs.google.com/forms and select Blank or one of the templates, you will be taken to the blank form page to start customizing.
2. Open Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides, go to File, click on New and then tap on the form to create your blank form
3. Open Google Sheets, go to Tools, tap on the Create a Form this option links your form to a spreadsheet.

How to Customize Created Google Blank Form to your Preferred Design – Google’s Form Template Selection

After creating your form, the next thing is to customize it, and make it look like your brand, and what looks you want to give it, you have templates and themes to choose from, and you can also add a header,(image), color, and font style.

How to add questions, headers, and sections

• In Google Forms, open a form.
• Click Add Add.
• To the right of the question title, choose the type of question that you want.
• Type the possible responses to your question. To prevent people from not answering, turn on the required.

How to Add an Image or Video

You can add an image to a question or an answer for multiple-choice or tick-box questions.

1. In Google Forms, open a form.
2. Click a question or answer.
3. To the right, click Add image Insert image.
4. Upload or choose an image.
5. Click Select.

How to Add a Section

Sections can make your form easier to read and complete, here is how to add sections on Forms

• In Google Forms, open a form.
• Click the Add section.
• Name the new section.

How to Duplicate a Question, Image or Section

1. Click a question or image.
2. Click Duplicate Copy to duplicate sections;
3. Next, click a section heading.
4. Click More.
5. Click the Duplicate section.

Generally, you can always use the artist’s palette at the top of the screen to apply the header images; either upload or choose from the default one provided by Google, you can also change color, background color, and font style.

How do I duplicate a Google Form?

After you have created and customized your form, the next question is how do I duplicate my form? It’s easy following the below two ways you can create a duplicate of your Google Forms; Duplicating Forms Directly Through Google Forms; Duplicating Forms Through Google Drive.

How to Duplicate Forms Directly Through Google Forms

• Open the form from the Google Forms dashboard that you want to duplicate.
• Now, click on the three vertical dots icon in the top right corner of the screen. This will open a drop-down menu.
• Next, you have to click the “Make a copy” option out of all the drop-down menu options.
• Now, just set the document name & folder path where you want to store the form. Both things will appear in the dialog box on the screen.
• Next, click on the “OK” button to create a duplicate form on your selected location.

How to Duplicate Forms Through Google Drive

• Open Google Drive and click once on your form to access a list of functions.
• Now, click on the 3-vertical dots and click on the “Make a copy” option from the drop-down list. Thereafter, a duplicate of your form will be posted in the same location as your original form in Google Drive.

Google’s Forms Responses Format – How to Choose Question Types – Question Types Options

Creating your forms comes with different ways for your audience answer your question which is chosen or controlled by the form creator. You can choose to make your question types; Static Answers, Multiple choice answers, Essay length answers, tick box responses, etc, below are the comprehensive choices of question types you can use when creating forms.

1. Short Answers
2. Paragraph
3. Multiple choice
4. Checkboxes
5. Dropdown
6. File upload
7. Linear scale
8. Multiple choice grid
9. Checkboxes grid
10. Date
11. Time

Google’s Form Response Options and When Best to Use Each Response Option

Your choice of response option is deeply dependent on the type of response of information you want to collect using forms. And the type of question you ask determines what response option to use, here is a brief explanation of all the response options and when best to use them.

Short Answer – Best for Collecting Email Addresses and URLs

The short response option helps you to control what information or responses people provide by setting rules using the data input validation, that’s why it’s best for collecting emails and URLs reason is that email addresses and links have a pattern or format it should appear.

Paragraph – Best for collecting the Bio or info of your Respondent

Yes, the data input validation is also used on paragraph response type, but more so, is that users can input long data such as; descriptive information, about themselves, detailed info on a subject, and even respondent bio can be collected using the paragraphs response type.

Multiple Choice – Best for collecting General Responses

The multiple response types give your respondent the free-no-rules and no control access to the key-in information on how they want and what information you want to key in. it has no response/input validation.

Checkboxes – Best For collecting NO/YES Responses

The checkboxes are best for collecting survey or quiz responses where responders only need to give a NO/Yes or when there is a question that requires a simple tick on the correct answer form.

Drop-down – Best for Collecting Optional Data

The dropdown menu question type helps responders to choose from varieties of answers provided by the form creator or admin which makes it easier for them to only answer from the provision the creator made.

File Upload – Best for collecting Addition File Format

The file upload helps the responders to upload a file alongside the answers they have provided and files uploaded through forms are saved on Google drive created by the form owner. Which can be accessed using the owner’s drive login details or google account.

Linear Scale – Best For rating Questions or collecting Rating Responses

The Linear scale is used when you want respondents to rate your question from 0 to 10.

Multiple Choice Grid

This creates a grid from which people can select one answer per row. Optionally, you can limit answers to one choice per column and shuffle the row order.

Checkbox Grid

This option creates a grid from which people can select one or more answers per row. Optionally, you can limit answers to one choice per column and shuffle the row order.

Date

The responder must choose the date as an answer to the question. The default is day, month, and year. Optionally, you can include the time in people’s answers.

Time

The responder must choose the time of day or the duration of time.

How to Add Follow-Up Questions

The situation arises when creating forms, that will require you to ask questions based on previous responses by respondents.

Take for instance, if you ask a true or false question and want an explanation when the respondent enters false. To do this, you’ll add a section with a multiple-choice or dropdown response.

Instructions

• Tap the three-dot menu at the bottom right and select Go to section based on the answer.
• Go to the section based on the answer option in Google Forms

Tips: For each option, you can send the respondent to the next section, or any other section in your form, or skip the right to Submit the form to end that respondent’s participation.

How to Create a Quiz Key – Create &grade quizzes with Google Forms

You can use Forms on Google to make quizzes and grade students in schools and educational institutions. The most important is that it’s seamless and easy to create. Here is how to make new quizzes & answer Responses using forms;

• In Google Forms, click Plus.
• At the top right, click Settings.
• Click Quizzes and then Make this a quiz.

How to Collect Email Addresses on Google’s Forms

Let’s say, you opened a new store or shop or you want to run an event, you can use Google’s form to collect emails of customers and send them notifications of new products, promo, and other business info.

Instructions

To collect email addresses, click General, and then collect email addresses.

Make A quiz on Google Forms

After you enable quiz mode, you can choose when to release a student’s mark, and what information he can see after he’s submitted his quiz. When you finish, click “Save” to exit the window.

Once you return to your quiz, select one of the questions, and then click “Answer Key” to edit the correct response, and the weight each question has in the quiz.

Here’s where you set the correct answer(s), decide how many points each one is worth, and add answer feedback for the answers to each question.

Click “Edit Question” to close the answer key and save your changes.

Once you’ve collected all the responses, you can see the average and median grades. You can also view each question to see how many got it right vs. wrong.

How to Collaborate on Forms

Google suite applications offer collaboration features to staff and team members or groups. Similarly to that, Google’s forms also offer such collaborative features, in that, a survey created with google Forms can be managed and edited by every group involved in the survey. Amazingly, the collaboration features function as a shareable link. This simply means anyone that you give access to

Instructions

1. Click the three dots at the top of the page, and then click “Add Collaborators.”
2. Next, under the heading “Who Has Access,” click “Change.”
3. Select “On – Anyone with the link” to generate a shareable link. Anyone with this link can then access and edit your form.
4. Click “Save.”
5. Now, you can copy and share the link with anyone you want to have access to your form.

Store Responses in Spreadsheet – How to Store Responses in Google Sheets

Google Forms not only collects responses and data, but it also stores the data collected in the Spreadsheet, most importantly is that it captures current responses and updates the very second the respondent hits the submit button. So, the owner of the forms views responses collected using the “Responses” tab located at the top edge of the screen.

But that is a simpler way of storing the responses collected, in the event you would want to make changes or manipulate the responses, you will need to create a separate spreadsheet or link your form to existing sheets. Linking or creating a new spreadsheet or google sheets allows you to apply many types of calculations and Google Sheets functions to create formulas that manipulate your responses.

Instructions

1. Click on the “Responses” tab
2. Click the green Sheet icon.
3. Next, click “Create” to generate a new spreadsheet to store all your answers.

Tips: Each spreadsheet contains all responses, along with a timestamp of when the survey was completed.

To Link to An Existing Sheet;

You will need to click on the responses, then tap the green sheets icon, and then click “Select existing spreadsheet,” and then click “Select.” After which you can select the spreadsheet you want from the list of sheets saved on your Google Drive, and then click “Select.” When a response is submitted it will be stored on the Google Spreadsheets your selected.

How to Use a Form Template

Amazingly, google forms has hundreds of templates already created for almost any type of survey or form contact you would want to carry out. In the event you can think of a question to ask your respondents, the Google forms templates when selected populate existing questions that you can simply twist to fit the exact survey you want to carry out. There are types of templates in three sections; Work, Personal, and Education and sub-sections like;

1. Customers Feedback
2. Party Invites
3. Course evaluation
4. Students grading

Instructions

• Navigate to forms homepage.
• Next, hover your mouse on the multicolored plus sign (+) in the bottom-right corner.
• When the color changes to purple pencil and purple page icon.
• Click on the purple page icon.
• On the opened windows, select a template from one of the three sections: Personal, Work, or Education.
• Click on a template to apply.

Tips: Just like creating new questions, a template can be customized to your desired questions when applied using the edit button.

Review Your Forms and Do the final set Up

Now that you have created your form, you can now review forms and set the response limit before you can share the forms on social media, via email, and other shareable platforms. Here is the final setup before sharing;

1. Review all settings and questions
2. Set up to collect email addresses
3. Set up a confirmation message or notification when a form is submitted
4. Limit responses to one respondent (one person one form submission)
5. Set up respondents to edit forms answers after submission
6. Also, Set up respondents to view survey summary charts at the end of the survey
7. Set up a presentation that reveals to respondents the extent they have gone in filling the form
8. link to the results if you’re doing a poll

Instructions

You can set up any of the above options by tapping the setting cog at the top of the form page or screen.

Tips: Setting up option (4) limiting responses to one person (Limit to 1 Response), will require every responded to be signed in to their Google account, which simply means that respondents who don’t have a Google account won’t be able to fill the form when the link is sent to them.

When done, setting up the above-mentioned, you can hit the save button and proceed to share your forms.

How to Share Your Form

Let’s say, you are done with all the creating and setting up processes, the next thing is to get the form along to your respondents. Of course, you have to know the platform your respondents can be found in other to share the form link with them. Google forms permit sharing form links directly, social media platforms, and email or integrated into a website. We will talk about sharing a bit down the line.

Share and Send the Form via Email – Direct Link – Social media Channels – Integrated into a website

After creating your form, you can share it with individuals and groups.

How to Share Forms Directly

Go to the three-dot menu> Add Collaborators > then input email addresses or copy the sharing link.

How to Share Forms Via Email

Click the envelope icon and input the recipient’s email address, subject, and message.

How to Share Form Link – Copy and Send form Link

Click the link icon to copy the link to the form. You can also get a shortened form of the URL that starts with goo.gl/forms.

How to Share forms on social media

Click the Google Plus, Facebook, or Twitter icon on the right and click share.

How to integrate the form on a Website

Click the greater than/less than symbols to copy the HTML code. You can also adjust the width and height of the form.

Conclusion

I know by now that you can Create Google Forms with ease. You need to Create Google Forms to have access to your account online.  In the end, this post would have helped you create just any form either for party invites, surveys, student quizzes, grading, etc.

There is no limit to what you can do with Google forms. All you need is the knowledge on how to use Google form and make surveys, quizzes, and even contact and Feedback form for your business which this post has enunciated. Thanks for Reading.