Google Form™ responses: shorten long question headers without breaking the form
Every header on a responses tab is the full question, sometimes 90 characters long. Here is how to work with short names while the responses tab keeps the real ones.
Why not just retype the headers?
It is tempting to click on the header “How would you rate the venue, food and overall organisation of the day?” and type “Rating”. Don't do it on the responses tab:
- Forms owns that header row. Editing the question in the form can rewrite the header or start a new column, and then your short name and the form disagree.
- The exact wording matters later. When you report that 62% “agreed”, someone will ask what the question actually said.
- Other people use the tab too. A colleague comparing the sheet with the form's own summary can't match your short names to the questions.
Leave the responses tab alone, as the record, and give the columns short names on a working tab that reads from it.
Option 1: an array literal with your own header row
On a new tab, in A1:
={"Submitted", "Name", "Diet", "Rating";
FILTER('Form Responses 1'!A2:D, 'Form Responses 1'!A2:A <> "")}
The part before the semicolon is your header row. The FILTER underneath pulls in
every response and keeps up as new ones arrive. The number of names has to match the number of
columns, or the formula returns an error. That is useful: it tells you when the form gains a
question.
Option 2: QUERY with labels
=QUERY('Form Responses 1'!A:D,
"select A, B, C, D where A is not null
label A 'Submitted', B 'Name', C 'Diet', D 'Rating'", 1)
This is tidy, and you can also pick and reorder columns. There is one trap to know about.
QUERY gives each column a single type, whichever is most common,
and turns the rest into blanks. If a number question has one “about
20” among its numbers, that answer disappears from the result without any warning. Use
option 1 for columns where people can type free text.
Keep the full question with the short name
- A note on the header cell (right-click › Insert note). Hover over “Rating” and the full question appears.
- An alias table on its own tab, with the full question in one column and your short name in the next. It records what you decided, and it tells the next person who runs the form next term which name belongs to which question.
What makes a good short name
- Unique. Two columns called “Rating” break pivots and lookups.
- No punctuation or line breaks. Some questions contain a line break you can't see, and it will follow the header into every formula.
- Stable. Keep the same short name when the question's wording changes slightly, so this term's sheet matches last term's.
The one-click version
The add-on proposes a short name for every header over 30 characters. You can edit each one, the names are saved with your recipe, and the full question goes into a note on the header cell of the clean tab. The responses tab keeps its own headers.
Form Response Cleaner is a Google Sheets™ add-on: free for up to 250 responses, and your responses tab is never touched.
More on Google Form™ responses
- How to split Google Form™ checkbox responses into separate columns
- Count checkbox answers from a Google Form™ (COUNTIF on multi-select)
- Remove duplicate Google Form™ submissions, keeping the latest
- Phone numbers losing the leading zero in Google Form™ responses
- Why you shouldn't sort or edit the Form Responses tab (and what to do instead)
- The guide: every rule, with the by-hand formula
Google, Google Forms™, Google Sheets™ and Google Workspace™ are trademarks of Google LLC. Form Response Cleaner is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.