After automatically generating your files, Form Publisher lets you share them with your recipients. Read this article to learn how to configure your sharing options and email notifications.
How to receive notifications in your Google account (the owner of Form Publisher settings)?
Once you are on your 'Sharing options and notifications' sidebar, by default a PDF will be sent to the owner when a response is submitted:
You will receive an email notification with the PDF file each time a recipient will fill out the form:
If you don't want to receive a PDF in your inbox, click the PDF icon to open the different options:
From this dropdown list, you can choose to:
- Send a PDF of the generated file
- Share your Google Doc (or Sheets, Slides) with editing access
- Export and share your file as a Microsoft Word document (or Excel, PowerPoint)
- Remove your email account if you don't want to be notified
How to notify form respondents?
Method 1: Collect email address
Note: In most cases we advise you to do the above. However, in certain use cases you need to manually add an 'email' question.
Please refer to 'Method 2: Use a question marker' section for more information.
If you want to collect email addresses from a connected form, read step 2 of our article:
How to notify form respondent on each connected form?
From your original Google Form, open the settings:
Then, select 'Collect email addresses' > click ‘SAVE’:
A new required question appears on your Google Form:
Then open your ‘Sharing options and notifications’ sidebar, select ‘Notify Form respondent’:
'Form respondent' automatically appears in the list of recipients. By default, the Form respondent will receive the generated file as a PDF.
Click the PDF icon to open the different options:
In the above example, we decided to keep the PDF file.
Finally, save your Form Publisher configuration by clicking ‘Next’ or ‘Save’.
Method 2: Use a question marker
In certain cases you will have to use a question marker, for example, to use Approval Workflow option or to add one or more templates.
From your connected form, ‘Email address’ question appears at the bottom of your Google Form.
If you want to notify your form respondents on your connected form, you need to create an ‘Email address’ marker. To do so, open Form Publisher from your connected form. Click ‘Get started’:
Configure Form Publisher from this step:
Once you are at the ‘Sharing options and notifications’ step, add the <<Email address>> marker:
Click ‘Next’:
Your Form Publisher configuration is now saved on your connected form!
How to notify other people?
On the 'Sharing options and notifications' sidebar:
- Under ‘Add recipient’ enter your recipient’s email address
- Choose the delivery format (PDF, Google format with Edit/Comment/View access, Microsoft format)
- Click 'Add':
Once your email address appears under ‘Sharing list’, click ‘Next’ to save your configuration:
In our example:
- delphine.leroy@revevol.eu will receive an email with the PDF (the owner of the Google Form)
- simon.debray@revevol.eu will receive an email with the Google Doc in Edit mode
- Each time a respondent submits the form, he will receive an email with the PDF
Comments
25 comments
re: "If you have asked Google Form to automatically collect the respondent's email addresses in your form settings"
I have this selected, but when I look for the "Also share with respondent" that options does not show. I'm using a personal account, and the example above seems to show a G Suite account, so perhaps this only works for G Suite users???
Just go back one step in the Form Publisher, then move forward. It will refresh with this automatically.
Hi,
@SensorONE: You're right, thank you for pointing that out, we edited our article. For non G suits users, you can use the <<Username>> marker in the "Sharing option and notification" sidebar to send the file to the form submitter.
@Sam Eslamieh: You are on the right article: 1. To do so use the <<Username>> marker in the "Sharing option and notification sidebar" and select PDF in the dropdown menu. 2) You just have to remove your own email address in the same sidebar. Once your done editing the sidebar, don't forget to "Save" the new configuration before leaving.
Form Publisher Team
Hi,
I'm trying to have Form Publisher send a PDF by using a marker along with a domain name. <<Employee Name>>@mydomain.com. Form publisher allows me to do so... and I save these changes. But, for some reason, after a form has been submitted the @mydomain.com gets dropped off. How can I fix this?
Hi,
@Raffie: Thanks for pointing that out. We will add an error in the configuration sidebar to let our users know that this isn't possible. This field can either be filled by a valid email address or by a marker and not marker + something. In your case you should ask your submitter to enter their whole email addresses.
Hi,
I am using Form Publisher with Google Sheets. Is there a way to send only the pdf generated file to respondents? I do not want to send them the google sheet, only the pdf version of that. Is there a way to do that.
There is no way to switch off the "also share with respondent" option and only send them the pdf file?
thanks
Hi,
@Jean Paul Zoghbi: The "Also share with respondent" option will always appear in the sidebar as an option, but if you save your configuration with the "..." icon selected, this option will not be activated.
Hi,
I'm trying customize the email copy that gets sent, but it just sends the "Invitation to Edit" email from my gmail as the sender.
Hi,
@Jeff: Could you contact our support team so that we help you solve you issue?
Hi,
is there a possibility for respondents to see the pdf right after submission? Not have to wait for the email but have it auto opened?
Thank you for you respond.
Hi,
Zazunka X: Unfortunately, this is not possible as the file need to be shared with the respondent. If respondent are inside your organization, you can use the output folder to directly share all the files.
I am getting an error message to add a valid address when I try to add a google email to get a pdf. We have google mail through our school.
Here is the error message: Please enter a valid email address or marker. Leave a blank if you don't want to use predefined email addresses.
Is it possible for when I receive a form submission that I can hit the REPLY button and it will respond directly to the email address of the person who submitted the form?
This would be extremely helpful for creating canned reponses that contain specific information.
Hi,
@Bruce: This is not possible but you could insert the email address of the submitter in the email notification body so that you can directly click in the email to achieve your goal.
I am trying to use the Method 2.a: Use the <<Username>> marker, but it still won't send a PDF to the person who submitted the form. What am I missing? I have attached screen shots of my Sharing Options & Notifications and the Google Doc Template. I used <<Requester Name>> instead of <<Username>>; does that matter? I do have the Google Form set up to collect email addresses.
Hi,
Is it possible for you to contact the support, as if you follow this tutorial you should be able to notify people with the pdf file. Please contact our support team.
Hey guys,
Quick question. After I submit the google form sometimes it takes seconds to generate and send the PDF. Sometimes it never create it. When this happens I have to manually regenerate the file. Is there any particular reason why this may be happening?
Thanks for your support.
This is a great app.
Hi,
Could you contact our support team? We will help you find the solution to your issue.
Hi,
If you disable the option "Notify people by email", you will be able to share the file with other Google Account as Google Drive will handle the notification. But it will not work for any email addresses other than Google ones.
Hi, I had a couple of Qs:
1. Will the original form be comprised in any way, when we try to publish it into another format?
2. I DO NOT want the respondents to be notified at all, about the report being generated. The form responses (which I hope to publish) is to be used for analysis by our team. That said, is there any way in which the generated report, CANNOT be shared/received (for edit/view/comment access) by the respondents.
Hi,
The original Google Form will not be altered at all.
And you just have to let the "Share with respondent option" empty.
Is there a way to set up conditional notifications? I have a form that I'd like to go to 2 different people depending on the answer to a particular question. Is that possible?
Hi,
Yes you can follow this article to use condition on your Form submission.
Good Morning,
The same response is being sent to a file in my Google Account. I fill out the form, a diff person's response is sent to the file. Another person fills out the form same response of diff. person is sent to the file. When I look at the spreadsheet of the form completions, it is correct. Everyone's info is recorded properly. But the published form is the same guys info, over and over...
Plus, even though I have it marked to send me an email with the published form each time someone fills it out, I am not receiving them.
Please help
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