Someone fills in your Google Form, presses 'Submit', sees the thank-you screen, and then emails you a day later: they never got a confirmation. Or you are the one who filled in a form and are now hunting through your inbox for a copy of what you sent.
Google Forms does not send respondents anything by default. A copy of their answers, which Google calls a response receipt, only goes out when the form is set up to collect their email address and to send that copy. When either piece is missing, the form works perfectly and still sends nothing. When both are in place and the email still doesn't show up, the receipt has usually been filtered.
If you own the form, open it, click 'Settings' at the top and click the Down arrow next to 'Responses'. Everything that decides whether a receipt is sent sits in that one section. (If it is you, the owner, who isn't hearing about new responses, that is a different setting: 'Get email notifications for new responses' in the 'Responses' tab.)
- 'Collect email addresses' is set to 'Verified' or 'Responder input'. Without an address, there is nowhere to send a copy. See cause one.
- 'Send responders a copy of their response' is set to 'Always' or 'When requested'. See cause two.
- The receipt actually reached the inbox, rather than a spam or other filtered folder. See cause three.
- For a quiz, the score email is separate and depends on your 'Release grades' setting. See cause five.
Cause 1: The form isn't collecting email addresses
Start here. Google's help puts it plainly: if you collect emails, you can choose whether respondents get a copy of their answers. If the form doesn't collect them, the receipt option has nothing to work with, and many people never turned collection on because their form simply didn't need an email field.
There are two ways to collect, and they behave differently:
- 'Verified': Google records the email address of the Google Account the person is using. Google's help says respondents must confirm that their Google Account email address gets collected with their response, and a note saying so appears on the form. The address can't be mistyped, but the respondent needs to be using a Google Account.
- 'Responder input': the respondent types an email address into the form. They don't need to be using a particular account, but nothing checks what they type.
- To turn either on: open the form, click 'Settings', click the Down arrow next to 'Responses', and choose 'Verified' or 'Responder input' under 'Collect email addresses'.
- Turning this on now only affects new submissions. People who already submitted won't receive a copy, and if no address was collected for them, there is nothing on file to send one to.
Cause 2: 'Send responders a copy' isn't set, or is set to 'When requested'
Collecting an address is only half of it. The second setting, 'Send responders a copy of their response', sits just below it in the same 'Responses' section, and Google offers two choices for it: 'When requested' and 'Always'.
'When requested' does what it says. A copy only goes out if the respondent asks for one on the form, so anyone who skimmed past that option gets nothing, and from their side it looks exactly like a broken form. If you want everyone to get a confirmation, choose 'Always'.
- Open the form, click 'Settings', then the Down arrow next to 'Responses'.
- Make sure 'Collect email addresses' is set to 'Verified' or 'Responder input'.
- Next to 'Send responders a copy of their response', choose 'Always'.
- Submit a test response yourself, preferably with an address on a different email provider from your own, and confirm the copy arrives.
Cause 3: The receipt was caught by a spam filter
If both settings are right and the respondent still says nothing came, the email may have been sent and then filtered. Google's own help includes a tip on exactly this: in certain circumstances, responders may not receive expected response receipts due to spam filters or other counter-abuse measures. Google doesn't list what those circumstances are, so there is no single setting that guarantees delivery.
Ask the respondent to look beyond the main inbox:
- Check the spam or junk folder, and any other tabs or folders their email provider sorts mail into automatically.
- Search the whole mailbox, including spam, for the form's name.
- On a work or school address, the organization's own mail filtering may hold or quarantine messages before they reach the person. Their IT team can check.
- If they find it in spam, marking it as not spam tells their email provider they want mail like it.
Cause 4: The email address was typed wrong
With 'Responder input', the receipt goes to whatever the person typed. A missing letter, a swapped domain or a stray space at the end means the copy goes to someone else's inbox or bounces, and the respondent sees no error on the form either way.
Open the 'Responses' tab, click 'Individual', find their submission and read the email address recorded with it. If it is wrong, you've found the cause. Google's help doesn't describe a way to re-send a receipt, so either send them their answers yourself or ask them to submit again with the right address, if your form allows more than one response. For forms where the address really matters, 'Verified' avoids the problem, because the address comes from the Google Account rather than the keyboard.
Cause 5: It's a quiz, and scores are set to release later
Quizzes add a second email that people often confuse with the receipt: the one with their score. Under 'Release grades' in a quiz's 'Settings', you choose 'Immediately after each submission' or 'Later, after manual review'. Google's default is that grades release immediately.
If you picked 'Later, after manual review', respondents won't hear anything about their score until you release it. Google's help also says you can send results immediately or later only if the quiz collects email addresses, and by default a quiz doesn't collect them. To send scores once you have reviewed them:
- Open the quiz in Google Forms, click 'Responses' and then 'Individual'.
- At the top right of a response with a recorded email address, click 'Release score'.
- Tick the boxes next to the people you want to email.
- Click 'Send emails and release'.
- Under 'Respondent settings' in the quiz's 'Settings', you also decide whether people can see missed questions, correct answers and point values.
Why you can't send your own confirmation email from Google Forms
Many form owners go looking for a place to write a friendly confirmation email, with next steps, a payment link or a meeting time. Google Forms doesn't have one. The built-in receipt is a copy of the person's answers, and the form's settings don't let you change its wording.
What you can customize is the 'Confirmation message', the text people see on screen straight after they submit: open the form, click 'Settings', click the Down arrow next to 'Presentation', click 'Edit' next to 'Confirmation message', enter your text and click 'Save'. That message is not emailed. If you need a written follow-up in someone's inbox, Google's help points to the Form notifications add-on in the Google Workspace Marketplace, which it says can send customized follow-up emails to respondents.
Prevent it next time
A few minutes of setup before you share the link saves a stream of 'did you get my form?' messages later.
- Decide before publishing whether respondents need a copy. If they do, set 'Collect email addresses' and 'Send responders a copy of their response' to 'Always' at the start, since earlier submissions can't be sent a receipt later.
- Use 'Verified' when the address must be right, and 'Responder input' when respondents may not be using a Google Account.
- Put anything people must not miss, such as dates, next steps or a contact address, in the on-screen 'Confirmation message', which every respondent sees even when an email goes astray.
- Mention on the form that a copy will be emailed and may land in spam.
- Send yourself a test submission after any settings change, and check that the copy arrives.
If you'd rather respondents didn't need an account at all
If what you really need is for anyone to fill in a form without signing in, and for you to hear about every submission, OneSol forms work that way: respondents need no account, and you're emailed each new response.