How to Make a Google Form (Complete Beginner Tutorial)

​Google Forms might be the easiest way to create a form or survey. But if you don't know where to start, this tutorial is for you! In this video, Scott Friesen shows you how to create, edit, send, and review responses in Google Forms.

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Transcript:
​- This video is brought to you by SaneBox, the easiest way to manage all of your email. Do you need to make a Google Form? Well then, you are in the right place, because in this video, I'm going to show you how to create, send, and review your responses right here within Google Forms. To get started, you'll want to log in to your Google Drive account, and at the very top, you'll click this New button, and then come down here and select Google Forms. But there's actually even an easier way to create a new form. Simply open up any new browser tab and click in the word form or forms, it doesn't matter which, .new, and then select Enter, and immediately you'll be brought to your new form. Now, the very first thing that we want to do is come up here and give our form a new name. So instead of Untitled, I'm going to say Survey Example in this case. Now you'll notice in the top left hand corner, it is still titled Untitled Form, but if I click on this, it will immediately take whatever I've written here and give it the name for that file, but they don't have to be the same thing. So for example, maybe I'm going to call this Survey Example No. 1, just so it's easier for me to find or keep organized within my Google Drive account, but that's not what respondents will see. They're only going to see the name of the form here. Down below, we have the option to add a form description. So maybe I'm going to say, please take two minutes to fill out this form. It's not required, but if you'd like to give a little bit of instruction, or a bit of a description of what this form is all about, you can include it here. Now we can get started with creating our questions. Now this first untitled question may look like a multiple choice answer, but we can change it to anything we want. So for example, maybe I want them to include their full name. So I'm going to enter that in as the question here, and Google Forms will do its best to try and identify what type of answer I'm looking for. In this case, they are correct that I am wanting a short answer, just an open text field where people can include their name. But of course, if it's incorrect, I can choose this dropdown menu and choose from a wide variety of answer options. In most cases, it's these first five options that are the most popular or most common, but you can always come back and change that later. When I'm ready to add a new question, all I need to do is come over to the right and select this plus button. So for my second question, maybe I want the respondent to add their email address. Once again, Google Forms is automatically going to try and identify, and they've changed it to a short answer, which is perfect for this email address. One thing to note is that if we come down to the bottom of each question, we have the option to make it a required answer. In this case, I want to make sure that I collect their email address, so I'm going to select this Required toggle button here, and if I've forgotten to do so, I can come back up to the full name and I'm going to make that required as well, meaning that they will not be able to submit this form unless they fill in these required fields. I'm ready for a third question, so I'm going to select this plus button here, but because I was last editing the full name, it's included that question down below. On the left hand side, you can see this little blue highlight here, meaning that this is the active question. I've got a cursor here, this is what I'm actively engaged with at the moment. So if I was to hit the plus button again, that new question would be down below. But you'll notice as you hover over each question, there's a little six dot area here. So if I click and drag, I'm going to bring that down, because I want that to be the third question so I can quickly and easily rearrange my questions. Now for this third question, I don't want a short answer. I'm going to ask them what is your favorite color in this case? So again, it's going to try and identify what I'm looking for, but I don't want a short answer. In this case, I do want a multiple choice option. So now I can start adding my options down below. I'm going to start with the color red. I can either at this stage hit enter on my keyboard or come down here and select add option. I am going to type in the word blue. This time I'm going to hit enter on my keyboard, which is going to give me a third option, and I'm going to say yellow in this case. Now, you will always see this add option or add other as the last choice when editing a multiple choice question. At this stage, the viewer would only see these three options down below, but if I want to allow them to type in their own answer, I can select add other. In this case, they will see a fourth option where they can type in pink, purple, or any other answer that they wish. But if I want to go back and just limit them to just the three above, I can come over here to the right and select the remove icon. And I can do that for any of my questions here. And maybe if I want to put blue in front of red, I can come over to the left, click and drag, and I can reorder my options here as well. In this case, I'm going to leave the required to the left hand side, because maybe I only really care about collecting their name and email address, and not necessarily what their answer is to this particular question. Now at any time, you can preview what your form will look like by coming up here and selecting this eye icon. By selecting this, it will open up a new tab within your browser, and then you will see exactly what respondents will see. Here you can see that we have this red asterisk beside the full name and email address signifying that these are required questions. But my last question down below, what is your favorite color, is not required. And you can test this out by putting in your cursor, by adding a name, for example, just to see what it will look and feel like for your respondents. But one important note, if you do select submit, your form will record that as an actual answer. So if you're only looking at this screen to preview, be sure not to hit submit, or to remember and go back and delete those responses. Now, just before we send out our Google Form, let's change some of the colors and add a header, so it doesn't look like every other form. To the left of the preview icon, we have our customized theme option. And here we can change the font and the font size for the header question and text areas of our form. We can also come over here and choose a header image. If I select this button, I can either choose from one of the default themes right here within Google Forms, or I can choose to upload my own image from my computer. Since this form is about colors, I think I'm going to select this sort of jelly bean colorful icon or colorful image here, and I'm going to select insert. Now you can see that that image has been added to the top of my form, and it's also changed some of the other colors as well based on that header image. But below the header area, we can come down here and choose different colors that we would like to apply to our particular form. Now, it's going to try and pull some of these colors from that image, but you can also select this plus button and add your own custom color. We can also change the background, and I typically recommend choosing a darker background, so it contrasts with your questions on the form itself. When you're happy here, you can just select the X, and then we return to our normal editing view. With our form looking the way that we want, let's go and send it so we can start collecting responses. This big purple send button is what we want to select, and then a new dialogue will open up. Now you can send your form directly via email and paste in your email addresses and give it a subject and a message, but perhaps the most popular way of sharing your form is via a link. So let's choose this second option here, where we have this link to share. I recommend selecting the Shorten URL, so we have a shorter link to share. I'm going to select copy, and now I can paste that into any email, or social media, or really anywhere where I would like. Once people have started to fill out your form, you will see a number beside the Responses tab here at the top of your screen. By selecting Responses, we can now go and review those answers. So in this example, I've already collected two responses. I can see the names of the two responders, I can see their email addresses, and I can currently see the outcome of this favorite color question. So far, it's a dead tie between red and blue. Now, these responses will be updated live, so you can come back and review them as often as you like. And if you want to turn off your form and stop accepting responses, all you need to do is select this toggle in the top right hand corner of the screen. But if you want to be updated when you receive new responses, on the Responses tab, click on the more button and then choose, Get email notifications for new responses. Now with this check mark beside, I will receive an email notification each time someone submits this form. Now with this email setting turned on in Google Forms, you may see an increase in the number of messages on top of all of the other messages you manage within your inbox. And that's exactly why SaneBox may be a better solution for you. SaneBox provides you with a number of smart folders which learns from your behavior which messages are important, and which can be saved for later, and which you may never want to see ever again. In fact, I particularly like this SaneBlackHole option. When I get a message from someone that I never want to hear from again, and I don't want to have to go searching for the unsubscribe link or button, I can simply drag it over here into one of my SaneBox folders, and it will do the rest for me. And best of all, you can use SaneBox with any email address, including Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail. Just go to sanebox.com/simpletivity to start your free trial and you'll get a $25 credit if you choose to continue with the service. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.