Introduction

Most persons are acquainted with Google so much so that “Google it” is a legitimate response to nearly any question when no person present has the answer. Google is now much more than simply a search engine. Google has created multiple different tools that its Gmail users have access to. Many college students today are familiar with several of Google’s tools because of their ability to connect persons to work on group projects or store information for later.

This particular bit of information is focused on Google Forms, a tool by Google which allows users to create documents that allow others to fill in fields and submit data to the form creator.

Pricing

FREE. All you need is a Gmail account which is free.

Overall Thoughts

A free form creator is everyone’s dream, right? One of the perks of Google Forms is its ability to directly store submission information in a Google Sheet which is updated with each submission enabling users to pull data at any time as a csv file in Microsoft Excel or view it in Google Sheets.

One area of improvement for me is in form notifications. If I want to receive an email notification that a form has been submitted there are a couple additional steps.

If I am storing responses in Google Sheets follow these instructions: Tools > Notification Rules > Add another notification rule. Note that this method will only allow you to send notifications to your Gmail address. If the organization workplace email is not also a gmail address then one would be forced to set up a forwarding rule for their Gmail account.

No Gmail account? One could set up email forwarding per the suggestion above, but there is another option. There is an “add on” called Form Notifications that should allow users to set up email notifications for both the form creator and also a “receipt” to the form submitter. I prefer to use this option but if this functionality was built in to allow for email notifications to non-Gmail accounts – I think it would be more efficient.

Example of Form

Take a look at the example form that I created for you below. Please click “Next” after the photo of the goldfish to see the different type of fields you can make.

 Want to use Google Forms?

Check out this YouTube video tutorial on Google Forms released in March 2016.