The Do's and Don't's for using Forms

Friday, May 23, 2008 2:13 PM

Posted by: Jonathan Rochelle, Product Manager

We've heard plenty of great stories about how people are using the Forms feature of Google Docs and how it has really helped them collect information from friends, family, customers, employees and website or blog visitors. But (there's always a "but"), we've also heard some stories about how people have been confused when trying to re-arrange questions or otherwise change the spreadsheet underlying the form. Yes, we're actively fixing these issues, but in the mean time, here's a guide to getting along with the existing quirks of the current forms feature... Let us know if we've missed something by getting involved in the discussion on the Google Docs Help Group, where we've re-posted this information.

First - the basics: Yes, there is always a spreadsheet underlying a form... If you started with the spreadsheet, you knew that from the start, but if you started with the form (like clicking the "Create your own form" link on someone else's form confirmation), you discovered the spreadsheet part later (we hope!). Once your form is set up, form submissions get added to the spreadsheet at the bottom of your data - after the last row which has data already.

Second - the main source of confusion (and our fault): Generally, if you want to change the form, don't try to do it by changing the spreadsheet.... just edit the form. The form controls the spreadsheet more than vice versa.

Here are the detailed Do's and Don'ts to clarify how to edit forms:

	DO	DON'T
From the FORM	re-arrange questions using the up/down icons on the left of the question being edited delete questions you want removed from the form. Note: the spreadsheet column will NOT be deleted, so you won't lose any prior responses, but it will no longer be filled with any new data.
	DO	DON'T
From the SPREADSHEET	insert columns for your own data - calculations, notes, etc - which are not in the form insert rows under your column headers to create calculations of results (such as counts of each answer, etc. New form responses will always be added after the last row with any content.	DON'T try to re-arrange questions by cutting/pasting portions of columns OR whole columns DON'T delete columns that are in the form - they will not be deleted from the form and will eventually re-appear in the spreadsheet (next time you edit the form) as the first available column at the end of your current columns. DON'T change column header text, as the next edit of the form will overwrite those back to whatever they are on the form... make all changes to question titles on the form and those will be transferred to the spreadsheet column headers (overwriting what's there). DON'T expect re-ordering of questions in the form to change the order of columns in the spreadsheet