Polls made easier with Google Docs Spreadsheet
Google Docs Spreadsheet makes it easy to create and run polls.
There are quite a lot of polling applications available on the web. Some of them are really useful but many of them are not and can be cheated. Instead of maintaining another account for running polls how about using Google Spreadsheet to create and run polls if you already have a Google account (you might already!)?
In this walk-thru let’s create a sample poll to get the opinions of some of DemoGeek.com’s readers to see if they would really prefer to see more of screencasts than screenshot based posts at DemoGeek.com and also to find out which topic they prefer the most.
Step-1: Sign in to Google Docs Account
The basic, sign in to Google Docs.
Step-2: Create a New Form
Start by creating a new form by clicking on the “New >> Form" menu option.
Step-3: Poll Title and Description
When the page loads up you should be able to see a similar page like the above screenshot. Couple of things make up a poll, a title, a description, the questions and answers. Start by giving the poll a title and a decent description.
Step-4: Create Questions and Answers
Now, it’s time to fill out the questions and the possible answers. Type-in a question title and help text and then choose the type of answers from the "”Question Type” dropdown list.
The possible Question Types are,
For this example, let’s choose Multiple Choice as Question Type and type-in the answers as above. Once done click the “Done” button. If you want to make this question a required question then check the “Make this a required question” option.
Step-5: Add More Questions
Let’s add one more question to our poll. Click on the “Add Question” button at the top of the page and then choose the type of question you want to add. Let’s choose Checkboxes question type this time.
Once again, type-in the title, text and then type-in the answers for each choice. Once done click on the “Done” button.
By now, your poll will look like the screenshot above and is ready to be send out.
Step-6: Send the Poll out
Click on the “Email this form” button at the top of the page.
Fill-in the email address to whom you want to send the poll and hit the “Send” button. The poll will now be emailed to the recipients and the sender will get an email from Google Docs acknowledging the sent poll.
Recipient View
The recipient will receive an email similar to the above and will be able to pick their choice and can submit the poll by clicking on the “Submit” button.
You might get a warning similar to the above screenshot, just click on the OK button to continue submit the poll. That’s all you have to do to respond to the poll.
See the Poll Responses
After a while, the poll creator will obviously be interested to see the responses. It’s very simple to check the responses, sign-in again to your Google Docs account and then open the spreadsheet that has the poll title.
Click on the “Form(1)” menu and then click on the “Edit Form” menu option.
When the poll gets loaded click on the “See responses” button and then click on the “Summary” menu option.
Google Docs will display the responses in a neat format with graphs to visually give you an understanding of the response.
Running polls with Google Docs is pretty simple and straight-forward. I hope you find it useful. If you have any questions regarding this please let us know in comments.
May 31st, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Hey, there, thanks for the info! I selected "other," a fill in response, for one of my options and I'm not seeing that text anywhere in my results. I tried it myself, checked other, and put text in the book, but when I look at my results, I don't see that info anywhere. Can you help?
May 31st, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Also, I have set up the poll using check boxes options, so that people can choose more than one option, but that doesn't appear to be working. I can select more than one option, but only one selection shows up in the reults.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Thank you! I've struggled with inserting a poll into my Google website, but this works just fine
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Hello
I would like to add a survey with google spreadsheet for a contest and I don't want that someone vote several times.
So, how can I block the response to one unique person, one IP address ????
Thanks a lot
May 3rd, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Hi Maryann – you don't have to worry about this as this has been taken care of by default, a person can't vote more than once. It does that by the email address that you send the survey to and I'm not sure about at the IP address level. I think the email level restriction is fair enough.
May 4th, 2011 at 6:39 am
Hello demogeek,
The issue is that we don't send the survey with an email. Actually our survey is embedded on our website in order that people can vote easily whenever they want.
That's why we would like to block the IP address so one person would be able to vote once for each survey. You see what I mean….
May 18th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Hello,
So there is no way to block users to vote several times on google survey if it is embedded on a website ????
Best regards,
May 20th, 2011 at 7:45 am
Once I create the poll and save it, can I reuse it? When I see the file in my folder, under "actions" it has the option "Email as attachment" That's not what I want to do. Any ideas? Thanks.
Paul
August 11th, 2011 at 2:01 am
Is there a way that I can see the person's email address with the response in the spreadsheet view?
August 25th, 2011 at 3:46 pm
How can we edit the original question?
September 19th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
I'm seconding Amjad, I need a way to verify that the same IP isn't spamming the poll with double votes. The best way would be to obscure my ability to detect multiple votes, so that the offender doesn't expect my knowledge.
October 17th, 2011 at 8:23 am
How i could know the identity email or IP address of people answering my google doc form?