Send contact form submissions to a Google Sheet

The DIY route, honestly described

Doing this by hand is a real option, and it’s worth understanding because it’s exactly what RG Forms automates. You create a Sheet, open Extensions → Apps Script, write a doPost(e) that parses e.postData.contents and calls appendRow, then deploy it as a web app with Execute as: Me and Who has access: Anyone. Google gives you an /exec URL, and your form POSTs to it.

The parts that trip people up: getting the deployment access setting right (anything stricter and anonymous visitors get a login page instead of your endpoint), remembering that application/json triggers a CORS preflight Apps Script can’t answer, keeping the header row and the payload keys in sync by hand, and re-deploying a new version every time you edit the script — editing alone doesn’t change what the live URL runs.

None of it is hard. It’s just fiddly enough that most people get it working once, then never want to do it again for the next site.

The two-minute route

RG Forms does the same thing through the Google APIs, from your browser, with your own OAuth token. It creates a Drive folder, a Sheet whose header row matches the fields you defined, a bound Apps Script project, and a web app deployment — then hands you the endpoint URL.

The difference worth knowing about is the `_manifest` tab: a hidden tab in your sheet holding the project’s configuration as JSON. The script reads it on every request, so adding a form, renaming a field, changing the notification address or toggling spam protection takes effect immediately — no redeploy, and the endpoint URL never changes.

What your sheet looks like

One tab per form, one row per submission, one column per field:

Column keys come from your field labels — lowercased, with any run of non-alphanumeric characters collapsed to _. So “Company Name” becomes company_name. That’s the key you send in fields.

Posting to it

<form id="contact-form">
  <label>Name <input name="name" required /></label>
  <label>Email <input type="email" name="email" required /></label>
  <label>Message <textarea name="message" required></textarea></label>

  <!-- Honeypot: humans never see it, bots fill it in -->
  <input type="text" name="_hp" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off"
         style="position:absolute;left:-9999px" aria-hidden="true" />

  <button type="submit">Send</button>
  <p id="form-status" role="status"></p>
</form>

<script>
  const ENDPOINT = "https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycb.../exec";
  const form = document.getElementById("contact-form");
  const status = document.getElementById("form-status");

  form.addEventListener("submit", async (event) => {
    event.preventDefault();
    status.textContent = "Sending…";

    const res = await fetch(ENDPOINT, {
      method: "POST",
      // text/plain avoids the CORS preflight Apps Script can't answer
      headers: { "Content-Type": "text/plain" },
      body: JSON.stringify({
        tab: "contact",
        fields: Object.fromEntries(new FormData(form)),
      }),
    });

    const data = await res.json();
    status.textContent =
      data.result === "success" ? "Thanks — we'll be in touch." : "Something went wrong.";
    if (data.result === "success") form.reset();
  });
</script>

Common questions

More answers in the full FAQ.