Google Sheets

Each completed response becomes a row in a spreadsheet that hootform creates in a connected Google account. The spreadsheet is yours: sort it, filter it, chart it, share it. It's free on every plan.

Connecting a Google account

An organization owner or admin connects a Google account once, and every form in the organization can use it.

1. Open Organization settings → Connected accounts.
2. Choose Connect a Google account, pick the account, and allow hootform to create spreadsheets.

hootform asks for the narrowest access Google offers: it can see and edit the spreadsheets it creates, and nothing else in the account's Google Drive. Google describes this as access to "the specific Google Drive files that you use with this app", because spreadsheets are stored in Drive; it doesn't reach your other files. An organization can connect more than one account.

Sending a form's responses

1. Open the form's Settings tab and choose Google Sheets.
2. Choose Create a spreadsheet. If the organization has more than one account connected, pick which one first.
3. Choose Open the spreadsheet to see it in Google Sheets.

From then on, each response is added the moment it's completed. Partial responses aren't sent. Editors can set it up; anyone who can see the form can see where its responses go.

What the spreadsheet looks like

• The first row is a header, frozen so it stays in view.
• Submitted at (in UTC) and Response ID come first, then one column per question in form order, then one per hidden field.
• Answers read the way they do in the CSV export: choices as their labels, several joined with commas, files as their names.
• A question you add later gets a new column at the end, so earlier rows stay lined up. Renaming a question renames its header. Deleting one leaves its column in place.
• Answers are stored as text, so an answer that looks like a formula, such as one starting with =, never runs as one.

Earlier responses

Responses completed before you set it up aren't sent automatically. Choose Copy earlier responses to add them all to the spreadsheet, once. They're copied in the order they were completed.

When something goes wrong

If Google is briefly unavailable, hootform tries again a few times over about the next half hour, and nothing is lost. If sending can't work until someone acts, the integration shows Needs attention with the reason, stops trying, and emails the form's editors and the organization's admins:

• The spreadsheet was deleted, or the account can no longer edit it. Choose Remove, then Create a spreadsheet again.
• The Google account took back hootform's access, for example from its Google account settings. An owner or admin can choose Connect again in Organization settings → Connected accounts, and new responses are sent again.
• The Google account was disconnected in hootform. Choose Remove, then Create a spreadsheet in another connected account.

Responses are always collected in hootform, whatever happens to the spreadsheet.

Worth knowing

• Deleting a response in hootform doesn't remove its row from the spreadsheet.
• Duplicate responses are sent like any other. See duplicates.
• Encrypted forms still send readable answers: the spreadsheet holds what your team would read in the dashboard. See encryption.
• Turning it off stops new rows until you turn it on again. Remove stops it for good; the spreadsheet stays in Google Drive with every row it has.
• A form can send to up to 3 spreadsheets.