Google Forms: Students Did Not Finish

What if students do not finish a Google Form and need to finish it later? This is a tricky problem. You not only need to allow editing in the Google Form but have a way to get the student the link to finish later. There is no way to capture this without coding.

Template

Try It

Click on the Google Form to set goals for what you want to learn in Google Apps. You will be emailed the link to your response so you can update your goal setting.

Setting Up the Add-on – Form Edit Link

I have not submitted this Add-on to Google. As with most of my Add-ons you will need to start with the short

Set Up Menu

After making a copy of the Google Form, go to the puzzle piece icon at the top right and choose “Email Form Link”

Authorize the Add-on

You will need to authorize the Add-on.
This may require clicking on ‘Advanced’ and ‘unsafe’ (it is safe).

Setup

When students submit the Form the link to edit or finish the Form will be added to the spreadsheet of responses. You can choose to have it automatically email this link to all of the students.

Choose “Setup with Send Email” if you want students to receive an email after submitting with the edit link.

Choose “Setup with no Email” if you want the control distributing the edit link.

Spreadsheet

The Add-on will create a spreadsheet for your responses, or add a sheet to the spreadsheet you already have. When a student submits the Form the link to edit their response will be added to the spreadsheet automatically.

Instead, Manually Set Google Form to Allow Editing After Submit

If you do not want to use the template go to the the settings of your Google Form, enable editing after submitting the Form. This will allow the student to come back to the Form and update their answers. You may want to allow students to review after taking an assessment and update their responses.

Edit Response

When editing a Google Form, in the settings cog, is the option to “Edit after submit.” This gives you the false assumption that students can come back to the Form to finish or update their form later. This is only true if they save the edit link.

Edit Your Response

After students submit, if you selected ‘Edit after submit’, they have an option to “Edit your response.” This will allow students to click on that link to get back to their form answers and update their responses.

Save the Link

In order for students to come back to the Form and finish it or update it, they would need to save that link…. but there is no easy way to do this. Students would need to right click on the link and choose “Copy Link Address.” They would then need to paste and save it somewhere.