Unlocking the Power of Google Sheets: Using Forms to Add Data to a Worksheet Based on User Input

Are you tired of manually sorting and categorizing data in your Google Sheets? Do you wish there was a way to automate the process of adding data to a specific worksheet based on user input? Well, wonder no more! In this comprehensive guide, we’ll show you how to use Google Forms to add data to a worksheet name based on the data input. Buckle up, because we’re about to take your spreadsheet game to the next level!

Step 1: Setting Up Your Google Form

The first step in this magic trick is to create a Google Form. If you’re new to Google Forms, don’t worry, it’s as easy as pie! Follow these simple steps:

1. Create a new Google Form by going to forms.google.com and clicking on the “+” button.
2. Give your form a name, and add a description if you want.
3. Add a question to your form by clicking on the “Add question” button.
4. Choose the question type that suits your needs. For this example, let’s use a “Short answer” question.
5. Repeat steps 3-4 until you’ve added all the questions you need.

Example Form

Let’s say we’re creating a form to collect data about different states in the US. Our form might look like this:

Question	Type
State Name	Short answer
Capital City	Short answer
Population (2020)	Number

Step 2: Setting Up Your Google Sheet

Now that we have our form set up, it’s time to create a Google Sheet to store our data. Follow these steps:

1. Create a new Google Sheet by going to docs.google.com/spreadsheets and clicking on the “+” button.
2. Give your sheet a name, and add a description if you want.
3. Set up your sheet to receive form responses by going to the “Responses” tab and clicking on the “Get responses” button.
4. Select “Google Forms” as the response destination, and choose the form we created in Step 1.

Worksheet Naming Convention

Here’s where things get interesting! We want to create a worksheet for each state, based on the user input. To do this, we’ll use a script to dynamically create a new worksheet for each unique state name.

Step 3: Writing the Script

It’s time to get our hands dirty and write some code! In your Google Sheet, go to Tools > Script editor. This will open the Google Apps Script editor.

function onFormSubmit(e) {
  var formResponse = e.response;
  var stateName = formResponse.getQuestionResponses()[0].getResponse();
  var sheetName = stateName.replace(" ", "_");
  var sheet = e.source.getSheetByName(sheetName);
  
  if (!sheet) {
    sheet = e.source.insertSheet(sheetName);
  }
  
  var headers = ["State Name", "Capital City", "Population (2020)"];
  var data = [[formResponse.getQuestionResponses()[0].getResponse(),
              formResponse.getQuestionResponses()[1].getResponse(),
              formResponse.getQuestionResponses()[2].getResponse()]];
  
  if (sheet.getLastRow() == 0) {
    sheet.appendRow(headers);
  }
  
  sheet.appendRow(data[0]);
}

Let’s break down what this script does:

• It listens for the `onFormSubmit` trigger, which fires every time a user submits the form.
• It gets the state name from the first question response.
• It replaces any spaces in the state name with underscores, to make it a valid worksheet name.
• It checks if a worksheet with the state name already exists. If not, it creates a new one.
• It sets up the headers for the worksheet, and adds the form data as a new row.

Step 4: Setting Up the Trigger

The final step is to set up the trigger that will run our script every time a user submits the form. Follow these steps:

1. In the script editor, click on the “Triggers” button in the left-hand menu.
2. Click on the “Create trigger” button.
3. Select “On form submit” as the trigger type.
4. Select the script function we created in Step 3 (`onFormSubmit`).
5. Save the trigger.

The Magic Happens!

Now, every time a user submits the form, the script will run and add the data to a worksheet with the state name. If the worksheet doesn’t exist, it will be created dynamically!

Example Output

Let’s say we’ve submitted the form with the following data:

State Name	Capital City	Population (2020)
California	Sacramento	39,538,223
New York	Albany	20,201,203
Texas	Austin	29,743,744

The script will create three new worksheets: “California”, “New_York”, and “Texas”, and add the corresponding data to each worksheet.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve shown you how to use Google Forms and Google Sheets to add data to a worksheet name based on user input. This powerful combination of tools can automate tedious tasks and make your life as a spreadsheet ninja much easier.

Remember to experiment with the script and adjust it to fit your specific needs. With great power comes great responsibility, so use your newfound skills wisely!

Thanks for reading, and happy spreadsheet-ing!

Keywords: Google Sheets, Google Forms, script, automation, user input, worksheet, dynamic, magic

Frequently Asked Question

Get ready to conquer the world of Google Sheets with these frequently asked questions about using a form to add data to a worksheet based on the data input!