Google Forms – Survey Data Storage

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I am trying to capture and store data into a spreadsheet using google forms. Everything will be stored in google drive.

  1. How do I set up forms/ spreadsheet to input the data captured in the form into particular columns of a spreadsheet

  2. The form will be sent out each week and the data will be sent to the specific columns for that weeks information

  3. I was intending on using Boomerang for the repetitive emailing (does anyone have any better solutions?)

Help with any of the above will be greatly appreciated.

Best Answer

Your Google Form decides which column to store the data in - you do not control this.

And the design you're aiming for (different weeks data in different columns) is likely to cause long term problems. But there is a better approach:

In general, the first column in the sheet which it stores data in is labelled Timestamp, and contains the date/time when the data was entered.

Each column after that contains data in the order in which the question was added to the forum, ie:

  • Column B gets the answer to the first question you added.
  • Column C gets the answer to the second question you added, etc.

These relationships are maintained even if you re-order the questions on the form.

You can add helper-columns to the right of the ones filled in the by the form. So you could add "week submitted", and use this to calculate the value from the Timestamp column.

Then use a pivot table (or similar) to create a summary of the data, with the "week submitted" as the column value. This will give a view of the data like what you described originally, while still using the Forms data storage approach.

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