Google Forms are powerful tools for collecting information, but their real magic unfolds when you integrate them with Google Apps Script. Apps Script allows you to automatically process form responses, send custom emails, update spreadsheets, and much more, transforming raw data into actionable insights and streamlined workflows. This section will guide you through the fundamental steps of accessing and manipulating form responses using Apps Script.
The first step in working with form responses is to link your Google Form to a Google Sheet. This is typically done within the Google Forms interface itself. Navigate to your form, click on the 'Responses' tab, and then click the green 'Link to Sheets' icon. Choose to create a new spreadsheet or link to an existing one. This spreadsheet will serve as the destination for all your form submissions, and it's what Apps Script will primarily interact with.
Once your form is linked to a spreadsheet, you can access this spreadsheet from your Apps Script project. You'll use the SpreadsheetApp service to get the active spreadsheet and then locate the specific sheet containing your form responses. Usually, the responses are in a sheet named 'Form Responses 1'.
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
var formSheet = ss.getSheetByName('Form Responses 1');Now that you have a reference to your form's response sheet, you can retrieve the data. The getDataRange() method gets all the data in the sheet, and getValues() converts it into a 2D array, where each inner array represents a row of data.
var data = formSheet.getDataRange().getValues();The first row of this data array typically contains the headers (the questions from your form). The subsequent rows contain the actual form responses. You'll often want to skip the header row when processing responses.
var headers = data[0]; // The first row is headers
var responses = data.slice(1); // Slice from the second row onwards to get just the responses