Why Google Forms is so valuable

You may already be familiar with some of Google Drive's more popular tools such as Docs, Sheets, or Slides, but if you come down to the More option, you'll find perhaps one of the most powerful tools here within Drive, and that is Google Forms.

So in today's video, I wanna show you everything you need to know about creating forms, surveys, or participant feedback right here from within Google.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress, and if we select Google Forms, it's going to open up a brand new form for us.

How to access Google Forms

to start working with, so let's get started. Here's our untitled form and probably the first thing that you want to do is give your form or your survey or whatever, you're going to use this form for a title.

Add Title and Description to Google Form

So let's just call this one form number one, let's keep it nice and simple. Now below, you also have an option to add a description. Now, this is not a requirement, but sometimes it can be helpful to add a brief description just to let the survey participant or whoever is going to be accessing this form, you know why you would like them to fill this out?

Adding and Editing Questions

NNow down below, you will have an initial question already pre-populated. It's just titled Untitled Question, and we've got Option One number here.

So let's start with an easy one. Let's start with "What is your name?" right?

And the great thing about Google Forms is that you may have noticed that that multiple-choice option which was here just a moment ago has actually changed because Google Forms assumed that I was asking a short answer question. It actually automatically made that change for me, which is great because this is exactly what I'm looking for. I just want a short text box so people can enter in their name.

Now, of course, there's a wide variety of questions.

Different Question Types in Google Forms

In which we can ask including both short-answer and long-answer, such as a paragraph, multiple choice, checkboxes, and dropdown are among some of the most popular options, especially because it's so easy for the participant to fill things out.

Another great option within Google Forms is you can actually allow users to upload a file if you want them to send you a screenshot or upload a PDF. Maybe you need them to sign a contract or sign a permission form; you can do that here with file upload.

Then there's a few different scales and grids: a linear scale, you're probably used to seeing this, usually like a five-point scale, something like never, rarely, sometimes, often, and all the time; a multiple-choice grid; a checkbox grid. You can also allow them to choose a date or time.

We're not gonna go through every single option here, but I encourage you to experiment and use these different options as a part of your form.

So for this first question, "What is your name?" we want it to be a short answer; that's great. Let's take a quick look at some of the other options.

Changing Question Options

That are available to us here.

Here, we can duplicate this question. This is very helpful if you have something like a multiple-choice answer field, and maybe the answers are going to be the same for another question, so you can just easily duplicate that question.

Here we can delete this question if we need to, and then we have something that's called "Required." There may be some questions within your form that you want to force the user to respond to. So by selecting this slider, they will not be able to submit the form until they answer this question, or any other question that you may have selected this slider for.

All right, now that we've got our first question here, let's add a few more. To do that, we wanna go over to the right and we've got this sort of floating menu here, and we wanna hit the plus button. That's gonna add a new question. So let's add a multiple-choice question this time around.

Adding a Multiple Choice Question

How is your day going so far?

Alright, so option number one, maybe I wanna say, "It's great," you know, that's one option. If I wanna give them another option, go down to number two, "It's okay," and maybe a third option, I'm gonna say, "It's been a bad day."

Alright, so I've got three multiple-choice options here. I can continue to add as many options as I'd like, but you'll also notice that there's an "Add other" option, and you're probably used to seeing this in other forms as well. I can add an "Other" option so that if they don't relate to any of the choices given here, they can write in their own option. That can be very helpful. It may just depend on the type of question that you're asking.

Now, if you want to remove any of these questions, you simply just need to choose the X over here on the side. There, I've gotten rid of my other question. You can also rearrange your questions. You can see the six little dots. If I want the "Okay" option to be first, I can put that at the top, and maybe "It's been a bad day," I want that as the second option. I can move them in any order that I like.

You'll also notice that there's a little image icon here to the right as well.

Adding Images to a Question

Depending on the type of question you choose, such as multiple choice, you can add an image to these answers. So maybe I want a great big happy face beside "Great." Maybe I want a sad face beside "It's been a bad day." Or maybe, depending on my question, maybe the question is something like, "Hey, which of these pictures do you like the most?" or "Which of these logos do you think our company should use?" You don't even have to have any text; you could just have them as an image-based answer for the participant to choose.

Alright, let's maybe add—let's keep with the hover area here because there's a few more options we can use as well. The second choice here is to import questions. So this is great if you've already created some forms within Google Forms, maybe you want to repurpose some questions, particularly some complicated questions that you've used in the past. Here, I've got some other forms, I could import existing questions into this new form.

This one down below is actually not about changing the text or the text size, but it has to do with adding a title and description. Now if I select this, it's not going to replace the title at the top of the screen, but maybe you'd like to add a title or some additional description further on in your survey. So if I select this, you can see I've got a new section here. I'm just gonna say, "Keep going," and I can add a description if I want, "Don't give up." Or maybe you just wanna tell people what's happening in the next part of the section. If you wanna add a little more detail, but it's not exactly a question, you can do that by adding a title here.

I'm just gonna get rid of this by selecting "Delete."

Adding Images or Video to Google Forms

In this particular example, you also see the ability to add an image or add a video.

Let's maybe add an image just as a quick example. You can either upload an image from your device, take a snapshot if you know the URL, or look at some of your files within your albums or within your Google Drive.

So if I choose an image to upload here, I'm just gonna see if I can find something, something quick. Let's do this one, this bunch of Google Apps here. It's gonna upload that image and then insert it directly into my form.

Now you'll notice this is not a type of question. I can't add a question on top of this, but the way where this image or adding a video may be helpful is that if you have a set of questions relating to this afterwards. So you could tell them here, "The next three questions or the next few questions relate to this image," or "Look at this image carefully, and then answer the next few questions." And so they can always use this as a reference.

Adding a Section to Google Forms

The last thing that we wanna see here is that we can add a new section within Google Forms. So if I choose this option, you can see that it's created some separation. Now I've got Section 1 of 2 for the first couple of questions that I've created, and I can create a whole new section here.

Now this can be very valuable if you are wanting to break up a very lengthy form. A really good rule of thumb is to limit about maybe four or five or maybe six questions at most per page, and then force the user to click "Next" or to move on to another section. The reason being is that sometimes when people open up your survey, or your form, or your feedback, whatever you're using this form for, if they see, you know, 27 questions or a very, very long list, they might give up before they even begin. So breaking it up into sections can be very, very helpful.

Here's our new section, and I'm gonna actually add just one quick, quick sample question here. Just say, "Option one, option two, option three," just so we can use it in our preview, just so you can see what this looks like with the different sections.

Now before we see the preview,

Changing the Google Form Theme

Let's take a look at customizing the theme here within our survey. Up here at the top, you'll see that there's this "Customize Theme" palette, and if we select this, we've got a few different choices.

We can choose an image for the header section for the beginning of our quiz or our form. I've got an example over here—something very colorful. But of course, this could be your logo, it could be a brand name, or a title of the survey that you can add at the top of that survey.

You can also quickly change the theme color. So if I'm doing something for Simpletivity, well maybe I want something a little more blue in my theme or maybe I want something a little more bright, like this orange.

I can also change the background color, if I want it to be all white or if I want more of a contrast between the questions and what's going on behind the screen.

Our last choice is to change the font style. However, I would be careful about this. They've got this decorative text here and a few others that often make it a little more difficult to read. I would recommend that you either keep it basic or choose something that's very easy for your participants to read.

So you can change your theme here as well. Okay, now that we're happy with the theme, we've got sort of the basis of our quiz or our form here.

Previewing the Google Form

Let's take a preview, and here we have this little eyeball. If we click "Preview" in a new tab, it's gonna open up our form. So here is Section Number One. Remember, we only had a few questions here, right? So I can say my name is Scott. My day's been, you know, it's going pretty great today. I'm gonna select my last option there.

And now you can see I've got a "Next" button because I still have another question to go, right? So if I select "Next," I can go over here, and here is that additional question as well.

So this gives you a feel for what users are going to see. This is actually the exact same thing that they are going to see when you share this form with others. But there's one careful note here: If you hit "Submit," if I hit "Submit" right now, it is actually going to add this information to the results of this form.

So be careful; this is actually more than just a preview. It's actually a really, it's a real live link to your form. So not only does it show you how it's going to behave, but if you hit "Submit," it may skew your data, depending on what you're using your form for.

So I'm gonna close this one off, yes, I'm gonna leave this. Let's go back to our form as well, and let's take a look at our settings.

Editing Google Form Settings

Just before we send this out to our participants, what other settings are available to us?

Well, here under "General," we do have the choice to collect email addresses if we want to force users to submit an email address. And then, of course, they can choose to get a response receipt as well if you want to send them their responses, making sure that they've been submitted correctly.

You can also require users to sign in, and this will limit them to respond only once per email address. So this can be helpful if you don't want someone to, you know, repeat and continue to submit into that form time and time again. However, this can also sometimes be a barrier, right? And if you don't want people to have additional steps in filling out your form.

Lastly, you can choose if you want respondents to edit their submission afterwards, or if you want to allow them to see a summary chart or text responses afterwards as well.

Now, there are two other options here as well. Under "Presentation," we can choose to show a progress bar, so as you're looking at the different sections, you can let them know, "Oh, you're 33% of the way complete," or "You're 67% of the way complete," depending on how many sections you've set up.

You can choose to shuffle the question order. Now, you wanna be careful with this as well because this is going to shuffle up all of your questions within your form. So just be careful if this is a necessity or not for you.

The last one, and this one is checked by default, is "Show a link to submit another response." If you don't want people to submit multiple times, sometimes you can leave this unchecked, and then uncheck this one so they don't submit another response.

Last but not least, you can customize your confirmation message, you know, thanking them and letting them know that their form has been submitted.

Converting Form to a Quiz

The last one here has to do with quizzes, and I'm just gonna give you a very brief overview. If you are a teacher or an instructor, you can choose to make this form a quiz, and that allows you to actually grade the quiz as the individual goes through the questions. You can highlight missed questions.

Again, not for everyone, but there are some powerful tools here within the Settings window.

Alright, now that we've adjusted our theme, we've taken a look at the preview, we've adjusted our settings, let's send this form out.

How to Send a Google Form

And we're gonna select the "Send" button here, and we've got a few different ways in which we can do so. Again, we've got the choice here to collect email addresses if we want. From this screen, you can actually send that email directly from this dialog. You can just copy and paste your email addresses, and you can adjust the subject and the message if you want.

But I think perhaps the most popular way of sharing a form is via a link. So here's your unique link that you can copy and paste. You can put it within an email, you can put it in social media. It even allows you to shorten that URL if you like, as well. So you can copy and paste this and put it wherever you like.

Our last choice here is if we want to embed this in the form of HTML. So if you want to put this on a web page on a website, you can do so as well by copying this and pasting it within your HTML editor.

Viewing Responses in Google Forms

All right, well, last but not least, now that we've sent out our form, let's take a look at our responses. To view your responses, you can see that there is actually a second tab to the right of "Questions."

Now, for this form that we've just created, we don't have any responses. But I do have another sample that I want to show you. Here's the one that I showed you earlier with the header, and we've got three responses.

So if we click on the "Responses" tab, you can see a summary of all of our answers. For this multiple choice question here, what did they write? This was a short-answer question, so here are our three different responses. And then I asked them, "What date is it today?" and they all gave different dates, so I think only one of them was correct.

Now, this is the summary view. You can also view this by question. So if I just want to look at that first question, I can see all of the answers here. I can toggle to the next question, it shows me what the question is, and I can see what the responses are.

Lastly, I can actually look at the individual responses. So by choosing this option, I can dive down deeper and say, "Okay, well, what did Participant One say overall?" He or she said "Yes," and then this date. So depending on what you're after, you can drill down a little bit deeper.

You'll also want to know that within the "Responses" tab, this is where you toggle responses on or off. So if I turn this off, I can safely edit things and know that no one is going to be able to respond at that time. But be careful because anyone who has the existing link is not going to be able to access or submit those responses.

Viewing Responses in Google Sheets

So you can toggle that here.

The last thing I want to show within the "Responses" menu has to do with this little Google Sheets icon. This allows you to view your responses in Google Sheets.

So up here, this is exactly what it looks like. We still have all the same responses that we saw on the previous screen. It includes a little timestamp showing us when that person submitted that survey. But the great thing here is that you can take this information and manipulate it in so many other different ways, creating graphs, creating charts, or maybe you just prefer a spreadsheet view.

So in order to do so, you can just click this little icon here and view them within your responses.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this video about an overview of Google Forms. Remember, you can use this in so many different ways. Do you want to submit questions for a survey? Do you want to use it as a contact form on your website? Or maybe a permission form where people have to submit information to you? You can do it all right here within Google Forms.

Have additional questions? Let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.