Create Forms With Google Spreadsheets
Google Dics Spreadsheets has a new feature, which lets you create a form that allows anyone to enter data into your spreadsheet. The idea is that users can create a spreadsheet, create a form for it, and send the form to anyone with an email address. They can enter data in the form right from their email, without requiring the person responding to log in or have a Google Account.
The forms are really easy to create. In fact, a form can be created without a spreadsheet, and a spreadsheet will be automatically created for entry of the form data. Also, a Google Gadget has been released that tracks responses to your form, though there is not yet a way to embed the form in a web page. Possibly, Google only wants the forms to be sent to specific people, not posted on blogs and other pages all over the web.
As Duncan Riley points out, though Google Docs doesn’t have a database program, a huge portion of database users only use the database software as a fancy spreadsheet, and this new feature means Google Docs can now replace Microsoft Access for that group. It isn’t perfect, but nothing in Google Docs is, and once again Google manages to corner the market on “good enough” for the average simple user.
screenshot by Andre Charland under CC license
Why is this blog so horribly slow to report on Google news?
Comment by Fail | February 8, 2008
Although there’s no easy tool to embed Google form in a page, it can be done manually. For instance, an tag can sucessfully embed the Google Form even in the Google Page Creator, as my test did confim.
Comment by Alex Moura | February 9, 2008
As Alex points out, you can use an iframe to embed the form into any page - which is pretty cool. I blogged about creating a simple online poll using this method, here:
http://www.mmmeeja.com/blog/web_design/using-google-spreadsheets-to-create-a-poll.html
I’d love to be able to show a much more customised “thank you” to visitors filling in the form - like a graph of the results. It’s a pretty cool start to what should become seriously powerful after a few iterations.
Comment by Andy | February 11, 2008