5 Steps to Sharing a Copy of a Google Form

Sharing Google Forms is tricky. You do not want to make your data you collect in your Google Form visible to others. You can not get a view only link from the Form directly and changing your Google Form to allow others to edit is dangerous. Google Forms does NOT have a revision history. If you create a formative assessment quiz or parent survey and want to allow another teacher to use what you created it is important that the other teacher makes a COPY of the Google Form. You do not want their Form results to be mixed in with your Form results.

1. Create a folder in Google Drive

Anything in a folder takes on the sharing permissions of the folder. To set your Form as anyone with the link can view you need to do this at the folder level. Create a new folder in Google Drive or utilize an existing folder in Google Drive.

2. Sharing Permissions Should Allow View Access

By default, the folder permissions are set to private. Change the folder permissions to anyone with the link can view.

3. Create or Place Form in the Folder

Since anything in the folder inherits the sharing permissions of the folder, any Forms in the folder are changed to view access. This does NOT give viewers view access to the edit screen. Sharing the link to the edit screen of a Google Form shows the live Form.

Note: when you create a spreadsheet it will also be created in that same folder and thus have “anyone with the link can view” permissions. Without the link to the folder or the direct link to the spreadsheet others would not be able to find the spreadsheet, but be aware that the spreadsheet is no longer private. You can manually click on the blue share button of the spreadsheet and change back to private.

4. Copy the Edit URL

While you are on the edit screen, meaning you have the ability to edit questions and view responses, copy the link at the top of the screen. I like to use Control L to highlight the URL and Control C to copy.

The link on the edit screen ends in /edit. The link on the live view of the Form ends in /viewform.

Edit Link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KMHW4lRgtHSoaUBMce0djPmD_y-CWXn2NCPoclstGVI/edit

View Link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdGnz5xezn9z9i3Ubbd-BzoNjCAtzWVbh8MpgdmAUiAHegvVQ/viewform

Notice the ID is different for each of the links. The edit link has a unique ID from the view link. This prevents unauthorized copying of Google Forms. However, it is important that you copy the correct link.

5. Change /edit to /copy

At the end of the edit URL is /edit. You want to modify this to say /copy at the end.

The link with /copy at the end will prompt a copy of the Google Form.

Example

Click on this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1u_S7sdKtGk_jj2drA-zHVJSrGHhusZ1plmOxyCPgRIY/copy 

You should be prompted to make a copy of the Google Form.