Google Forms Advanced Features |Google Form

Google Forms Advanced Features

There are some features that Google includes to help collect the data you want. Some questions will trigger response validations. If your question includes “email” or “e-mail,” the form asks if you want to collect the email addresses of respondents and limit responses to one per person. If you start with “How many,” the form assumes you want the answer to be a number.

You can change your answer by clicking change settings.

The short answer and paragraph question types allow the responses to be checked against parameters chosen by the creator before the responder can submit the form. When the response doesn’t fit the parameters, an error message is displayed. The default error messages can be replaced with a custom error message if desired.

1. To change response validation options, click the question menu icon, then click Response validation.
2. If the Response Validation doesn’t appear, the question type doesn’t support it. Change the question type to one that does (short answer, paragraph, or checkboxes).
3. Choose the response validation type desired. The options are listed below.

Number

The validation options for number are:

• Greater than
• Greater than or equal to
• Less than, less than or equal to
• Equal to
• Not equal to
• Between
• Not between
• Is number (i.e. it can’t be a non-numeric character)
• Whole number

Text

The validation options for text are:

• Contains
• Doesn’t contain
• Email address
• URL

Length

The validation options for the length of a field are:

• Maximum character count
• Minimum character count

Checkboxes

The form allows the creator to determine how may boxes have to be checked. The options available are:

• Select at least
• Select at most
• Select exactly

Regular Expression

This is a feature for advanced form creators. Regular expressions are text strings used to look for pattern matching, counting characters, and more, using a code. For example, a regular expression can look for the pattern of Canadian postal codes (e.g. Y1A 1A4 or T1W 2G9), count the amount of entered words, look for email addresses from specific providers (e.g. rocketmail.com or yahoo.com), or check for variations in a word’s spelling. Here’s some basic information on regular expressions and some useful expressions for Google Forms; if you’re feeling adventurous, here’s some in-depth information.

The validation options for a regular expression are:

• Contain
• Doesn’t contain
• Match
• Doesn’t match