Friday, May 13, 2011

Creating a Form Using Google Docs (FREE Forms!)

It's easy to use Google Forms, and it's FREE!

Log into https://docs.google.com using your Gmail/Google account information. (If you’re signing in to Google Docs for the first time, you might need to go through the easy sign-up process.)

Once you are on the Google Docs' dashboard, find the button/icon called “Create New” on the left side. A drop-down menu will appear. Choose "Form" from the drop-down menu. A new window/tab will open with a form creation application.

Here, you will need to edit the header of the form and add a brief description of what your form is all about. This can simply be a description, a set of simple instructions or a link to an external site. However, you don’t need to put every little instruction here, because you will get an option to include instructions in each single line item/question.

By default, the form consists of a question field, help text (instruction to user), data type and fields. You can write the question in the first field, a brief instruction to the user/participant and set the question type. The question type pull-down menu will help you decide which one to go with.

Below each item, there is an option to make that particular item required or optional. If set to required, the user will not be able to submit the form without answering that question.

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