Get early access

Four steps

The ready form is a short example: a permission slip for a school trip, with questions for the student's name, class, parent or guardian, parent email, emergency phone, medical notes and permission. It matches the permission slip template. Change its title and questions to suit your own use before you set up your PDFs.

Once Form to PDF is on the Marketplace, you will be able to add it to any form you already have.

1. Ask for your copy

1. Open the link to the ready form. Sign in to Google if you are asked. Use the Google account you want the PDFs and emails to come from.
2. Google says you need access. Press Request access. This tells us your Google email address and nothing else.
3. We make a copy of the form for you and share it with that address, usually within a few hours. Google emails you a link to it.

The copy is yours alone: nobody else can see it or its responses. We do it this way so nobody can change the form that everyone else copies.

Ask for your copy

2. Open Form to PDF

1. In your copy, open the Extensions menu (or the add-ons button, the puzzle piece, at the top of the page), then choose Form to PDF › Open.
2. The first time, Google says that authorization is required. Press Continue (it may say Review permissions) and choose your Google account.

3. Allow it

Next, Google shows a page that says "Google hasn't verified this app". This is expected.

1. Click Advanced, at the bottom left.
2. Click Go to Form to PDF (unsafe).
3. Read the list of permissions and press Allow. If Google shows tick boxes, tick them all.

The side panel then opens on the right of your form.

What Form to PDF can do once you allow it

• See this form only. It reads the questions and the responses, to put the answers into each PDF. It never changes the form, and it cannot open your other forms.
• Only the Drive files it makes or you pick. Your template, your folder, and the PDFs it saves there. It cannot see anything else in your Drive.
• Show its side panel and its entry in the Extensions menu.
• Run after each response, so the PDF is made a few seconds after someone presses Send.
• Send email as you, to send each PDF to the person who filled in the form, and to tell you when a PDF could not be made. It cannot read your email.
• Know your email address, to send you those emails and to know whether you have paid.
• Connect to an external service: Google Drive, to turn the filled Doc into a PDF, and our licence service, to check whether you have paid.

The answers, files and emails stay in your Google account. They are never sent to our server. Our privacy policy has the details.

4. Set up your PDFs

Change the form first if you want to: the title, the questions and their wording. Placeholders use the question titles, so it is easiest to settle them before you make the template.

1. Choose a template. Press Make a starter template from my questions, and a Google Doc appears with a placeholder for every question. Add your logo and wording. Or pick a Google Doc you already use.
2. Choose where PDFs go. Pick a Drive folder, or let it make one. Give the files a name from the answers, such as {{Class}} – {{Student name}}, and choose a subfolder by an answer if you want one.
3. Check, then turn it on. Send one response to your own form, then make a test PDF from the latest response to see exactly what people will get. Then press Save and turn on.

Share the form as usual. If Google Forms shows a Publish button at the top, press it first. The help page explains the rest: placeholders, emails and the Log.

Price

20 PDFs a month are free, on all your forms together, with every feature. If you need more, pay $19 once to remove the limit on every form of your Google account. There is no subscription.