Limiting time and response is necessary for online surveys, online classes, and marketing campaigns in social media and ecommerce businesses. If you are familiar with any of these situations, you must use online survey making tools.
As there are a good number of surveys making tools available, google forms is the one that comes almost free and provides all the required options that may need a user. As the other google integrations like drive, Gmail, Docs, etc google forms also come with a user friendly interface, clear navigations of all the options included in it.
If you are new to google forms, then you have a lot of things to know but if you are using it, you must be enjoying all the aspects and using them for your own benefit as well.
Although, in this article, we will show you some ways through which you can set time and response limits in google forms. If you are a practitioner of online surveys, then it is not necessary to regard the importance of such options while making surveys online.
Therefore, it is sure the topic is worth getting some attention of yours. For your instance, we want to let you know that, in google forms, there are no such options that will let you set a time and response limit in your form. So, how can you do that? Let’s take a look at the discussion here below and you will know all about this.
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When and why do you need to set time and response in forms?
When you create any form with multiple choice questions to implement pop quiz for students, quick poll to get an opinion from target audiences, and also in large survey operations and done with it. The next step you take is sharing the forms in your preferred platforms and getting responses on that.
Well, after sharing the form on several platforms, you can get unlimited responses until you don’t stop getting responses manually. All the people on that platform will be able to see and fill up the form because it is saved as public by default option of google form.
Google form will notify you via email for every new response when it comes. You can close the form anytime and closing the form prevents respondents from giving feedback. You can letter re-open the form when you want, but all you have to do is manually by entering the google form which is painful for the person who has a lot more work to do.
Here comes the need for an option that will do this automatically for you. As previously said, google forms have no such internal option that will allow you to do that. But not to worry, there are ways that you can take in this regard. But before going to that, let’s see some points of view when and why you will need this to use in your google form.
- Schedule time limit survey requires when you want to create an event registration in online but you don’t want to get irritating response notification all day long as you know it will be going to create huge hype among the interested
- Also, if you want to close the form automatically by specifying it with a closing date or at the date when you want to end up the event registration time
- For teachers who take online classes, google form is undoubtedly a great integration to them. While taking online classes, they have to make quiz assignments for the class, sign in and sign out records. For collecting quiz answers, they have to specifically set a time limit through that the form will automatically open and close during the online class hours or the time they want to make it open. In this way, they can run schedule maintaining online asset exams even if they are not active there
- For marketers and online retailers, they need to make contests and giveaways to integrate and engage both potential and new consumers. If they use forms to take limited contesters, they have to set a limit of ‘n’ users who can fill up the form, and then it will automatically be closed in time
How to set limits in google forms?
So, we know that setting google forms responses to automatic is highly needed in some cases. Since google form has no option to do this internally, we have to install add ons to enjoy such features in google forms.
You can easily incorporate this functionality by installing add ons on your google forms. Here’s how to install the add-on and set a closing date and time.
- Open the google form interface on your device
- Whether you want to create a new form or you want to use this on an existing form, just open or newly create that
- Click the three dots menu button (top right) and then Get add-ons
- You will see a list of available add ons to install in the google workspace marketplace. As now we need a specific one of them, the name of the add on is ‘Form Limiter’. If you can’t find that available in the appeared window, then use the search bar, type the name of it and you will see it instantly appear on you
- after locating formLimiter in the add-on’s library. Hover over it and click the +Free button to install
- Google Forms will need permission to install the add-on. Click the “Continue” option to accept the terms and conditions and continue the installation.
- Another window will appear to you with a list of permissions that the add on needs to be visible. You have to confirm that you agree with these options and then click on ‘Allow’ to provide it with access to your Google account
- After setting up all those options, the add on now granted access in your google form add on option. To use the add on function, you have to click the puzzling sign (add on icon) above on the form page. After clicking you will get a drop down page showing the form limiter option, click on that
- In the form limiter pop up menu, click on the set limit option
- Another pop up will appear in the bottom corner of the page which will allow you to apply settings you want to set in your form.
Limit responses by submission number
With the form limiter add on, you’ll be able to set response restrictions based on the number of responses or by the date and time. Limiting responses by submission number is important for event registrations, managing limited time and access events online, and so on.
As you are now installed with a form limiter in your google form, you can now easily set a response limit in your form. To do this, you have to go through the options stated above. After opening the form limiter window on your form page, you will see this.
in the first drop down option, you have to select ‘number of form responses’ to limit the submission number in your form.
In the next option, as you can see, you have to put a specific number on the empty box. The number will be the reference of how much response you want to get in the form. For example, if you want only 10 people to respond in your form, just put the number 10 here.
Think you have reached the maximum submission in this form and still there are users who try to fill it. But as it is closed, you can show them a message including words like the form isn’t open anymore, or if it is a lime limited and will re-open after the specific period, you can give them a specific time when they will allow you to respond to the form.
And the last option you can see in the above if you want to get an email when your form has reached the maximum form submission, just click on the option and it will notify you in time.
After that, click save and enable to get it done.
Limiting responses by date and time
With a form limiter, you can also set a specific date and time to automatically stop getting responses. It is almost the same as the options we have come through above. You have to just choose ‘Date and time’ from the ‘Limit Type’ drop down menu.
The next option you can see says, ‘stop accepting responses when a due date is set on’, here you have to select the specific closing date of your form in the box provided. After selecting the date, you can also select the correct closing time of your form.
To get a notification in your email when the form is getting closed, just click the “Email form owner when submissions are closed” checkbox. And then click ‘Save and enable’.
However, if you want to disable the form before reaching the limit, no matter, you can do this. Click Add-ons > formLimiter, then click “Disable” in the pop-up menu.
There are some other add ons offer the same functionalities and you can also use them to meet your requirement of limiting your form response through time and response number. They are,
Control accepting responses
Control accepting responses is another option through which you can limit form response by time and response number. But it is one step further than the form limiter as it provides the option of starting time of your form. That means, you can create forms and will set the automatic starting time of getting responses through it.
To use this, you have to go to the add on store and search the name of it. After installing and granting access it to your form page, click on the add on option and select control accepting response. a pop up will appear from where you have to choose settings and info to work with the add on.
After that, you will see the add ons interface appear in front of you where you can see all the options included to easily implement how you want to limit your form response.
If you want to start getting response in the form immediately, just ensure to check on the box beside ‘Start immediately’ and if you don’t, just keep it unchecked. Fill up the boxes of starting date, hour and minutes, maximum number to accept the response, and lastly stop date, hour, and minutes.
Just like the form limiter, you can add messages to show respondents but unlike the form limiter, it offers more options in this regard.
As seen in the image, you can show messages to respondents who come to respond when it is done accepting maximum submissions. You can show a message before the form starts accepting submissions also. Check the option ‘send an email when the form closes to a second email address to notify when the form gets closed.
Email notifications for google form
Here is another beautiful add on to get an email notification for google form responses and also to schedule your forms and limit its responses. To use this, you have to install it first. The Installation process is the same as we have seen above. After installing and allowing the integration in your google form, you have to access it through the add on the icon in your google form. After clicking you will see a pop up holding options just like this.
From the pop up screen, choose the option you want to adjust. Unlike the above two add ons, email notifications for google forms are different in their interface and setup. It offers more options than them. Therefore, you can also consider this as your helping hand to deal with your massive survey forms online.
Frequently asked questions about the google forms
Whether you are new to using this online survey tool integrated by google or you just started. You may have some questions in your mind about this. Therefore, we have prepared this with the questions that people vastly used to ask google about google form.
Just give a look at this, you can find things you don’t know here below.
how to limit checkbox selection in google forms?
Taking answers from respondents with checkboxes is a good way to get a view of what users or audiences like or dislike. Through checkboxes, you can offer a bunch of options related to the survey motif and respondents will check which of the boxes are relevant to them.
However, if you have provided ten options for checkbox selection and you want to allow respondents to check three/four/five or whatever you want. You have to limit the checkbox selection internally to do this.
Here is how you can limit checkbox selection in google forms.
- Open the form with checkbox selection in your google form
- If you have already made it with your questions then you can go to the next step or if you do not, you should select the question type from the drop down menu beside your question field, then type questions and options for checkbox as many as you want
- After that, click on the three dot option at the bottom of the question box
- From the appeared pop up click on response validation and you will get a window to set the rules of checkbox selection and error message to show if the respondent doesn’t meet the rule
In this way, you can easily limit checkbox selection in the google form.
how to avoid multiple responses from a single email in google form?
Getting multiple responses from one single source isn’t acceptable to any survey author. It will harm your survey goal and you can’t accomplish the effective result through that. In the form you have created, you can’t get the email, name, or IP address of the respondents because google Forms doesn’t record that.
Therefore, if anyone has got it fun and provides multiple responses from one email, you can’t even figure that. To prevent respondents from applying multiple times in your forms, you have to adjust a little setting.
In your google form, click the settings bar and turn on the option that says “allow only one response per user”. When you turn on this option in your google form, it will prevent the respondents from overdoing multiple responses with the same email account.
Thus, they have to sign in with their email before responding to your form which means, without a google account, anyone can’t be able to fill up the form.
In this regard, if anyone tries to fill the form again, there will be displayed a message showing “You’ve already responded. You can only fill out this form once. Try contacting the owner of the form if you think this is a mistake.”
How many respondents can you have in a google form survey?
you don’t need to worry about this because there are literally no limits in this regard. Until you don’t stop getting the response or close the form, you will receive responses as much as your google sheet can bear.
If you have linked a google sheet with your google form, then the matter is, how much your google sheet can hold and collect your upcoming responses. Since Google Sheets has been designed for big data analysis, there are 5 million cells in the sheets which you can use to store google forms responses.