5-4 Google Forms

Store responses in a spreadsheet:

In the “Choose response destination” dialog, you can choose to create a new spreadsheet in which to store your form’s responses. You can give the new spreadsheet whatever title you’d like. If you’d like all of your forms to collect responses in a new spreadsheet in the future, make sure the checkbox next to “Always create a new spreadsheet” is selected.

Alternatively, you can choose to collect responses in a new sheet of an existing spreadsheet. Choose “New sheet in an existing spreadsheet...” and click Choose. You’ll see a list of your spreadsheets. Pick a spreadsheet by checking the box next to it and click Select. A new sheet will be created in that spreadsheet, and your form responses will appear there. A spreadsheet can collect responses from only one form at a time unless you have switched to the new Google Sheets, which allows responses from multiple forms to be stored in the same spreadsheet.

Once you’ve chosen to store form responses in a spreadsheet, the Choose response destination button in the toolbar will turn into a View responses button. Click this to see your spreadsheet. You can also find the spreadsheet in your Drive.

Note that responses sent to a spreadsheet are essentially a copy of your responses and are only sent one way — form to spreadsheet, not spreadsheet to form. In other words, if you modify a response in your spreadsheet, you’re not changing the original response, which will show up in summary view or the CSV download.

Keep responses only in Forms:

If you don’t want responses to go to a spreadsheet, click the Keep responses only in Forms button. Then, to access the responses you’ve collected, click the File menu, select Download as, and click Comma Separated Values.

Keeping responses in Forms is a good way to go if you expect your form to receive heavy traffic or a significant number of responses, as spreadsheets will hold only the first 400,000 cells of response values. Your form's summary view, as well as the results you download as a CSV, will always reflect all of the form responses that are submitted, even beyond these limits.

View Responses:

Once you’ve created your form and sent it to recipients, you’re able to view the responses you’ve received in three different ways: as a summary of responses, in a separate spreadsheet, or as a downloaded CSV

View the summary of responses

To quickly see how many users filled out a form and what their responses are, you can check out the response summary. From your form, click the Responses menu and select Summary of responses.

If you'd like respondents to be able to see this same summary of responses, check the box in the "Confirmation page" section of your form labeled Publish and show a link to the results of this form. When this box is checked, users who respond to your form will see a “See previous results” link, which they can click to view the response summary.

View form responses in a spreadsheet

To see a spreadsheet with responses to your form, click the View responses button in the toolbar. Learn more about storing responses in a spreadsheet.