Google Forms email template

Last updated September 2026 · ~10 minute read

Short answer: Google Forms has no email templates. Not for the invite, not for the receipt, not for the notification, and not for the follow-up. The send dialog takes a subject and a message you type fresh each time; the response receipt has two values and no editable body; the new-response notification is a single checkable menu item. Google's own help page answers the templated-follow-up question by pointing outside the product, at an add-on.

This phrase is four searches wearing one costume, and most advice about it is wrong because each piece answers a different one. Below: which four, what Google documents for each, and — for the one people usually mean — what has to be built instead, including the sending limit that decides whether it is viable at all.

Four emails, one search

Work out which you are after first. They live in four places, and three are not templates at all.

Number four is the one almost everybody means, and it is the one Google does not do. The three sections before it clear the others out of the way.

1. The email you send with the form

Google documents this in two places that describe different versions of the interface, which is why advice about it conflicts. The Workspace Learning Center describes the older send dialog:

“Add the email addresses you want to send the form to, along with the email subject and message. To include the quiz in the email, select Include form in email.” Google Workspace Learning Center — Create a quiz with Google Forms

The main Docs Editors help page has been rewritten around Publish and Share, and there the same job is done by a checkbox:

“To automatically send the form in an email notification when you share a form, click the box next to ‘Notify People.’ … If you notify responders when you publish the form, the email sent to them includes the form.” Google Docs Editors Help — Publish & share your form with responders

So the invite offers three things: a subject, a message, and the option to put the questions inside the message body rather than behind a link. That third one is conditional — Google lists four kinds of form content that switch it off — and has its own guide: how to embed a Google Form in an email quotes the blockers and what Google says about mail clients (nothing).

What matters here is what is absent: Google documents no saved message, no default subject you can set on a form, no variables, and no way to reuse last time's wording. The subject and message are typed into a dialog and sent. If you mail the same invite every term, that template lives in your notes app, not in Google Forms. The nearest thing to a variable is not in the message at all but in the link you paste into it: a pre-filled form link opens with that recipient's answers already entered.

2. The receipt a responder gets

Google calls this Send response receipts: a two-value dropdown next to “Send responders a copy of their response” offering When requested or Always, and it depends on the form collecting email addresses. Beyond that on/off decision Google documents almost nothing about the email — not its contents, not its sender, not its subject. The one published fact is a warning that “responders may not receive expected response receipts due to spam filters or other counter-abuse measures.” Nothing to template, because nothing is exposed to edit. Our response receipts guide sets out where the documentation stops and why a test submission is the only way to know what people get.

3. The notification you get

The owner-side email is one checkable item. Google's path: “At the top of the form, click Responses. Click More. Click Get email notifications for new responses.” That is the whole feature — no subject, no body, no condition, and no recipient other than you; the help page never names one. Whether it can go to a colleague, and what to do when it stops arriving, are in email notifications for Google Forms. No template, because there is no message.

4. The templated follow-up — the one Google does not do

This is the real search: after someone submits, email them something written that uses their answers. A booking confirmation. A “thanks, here is what happens next.” A different reply depending on which option they picked.

Google publishes no templating of any kind for form emails. That is not an inference from a menu item you cannot find — it is absent from all three places it could live, and each is worth showing.

• The help pages. The only thing the response-management page says on the subject is a tip pointing out of the product: “To get more notifications options and send customized follow up emails to respondents, download the Form notifications add-on.” When Google's answer to “can I customise the email” is “install someone's add-on,” that is the documentation conceding the feature is absent.
• The Forms API. The FormSettings object has exactly two fields — quizSettings and emailCollectionType. Nothing about mail. See the REST reference.
• Apps Script's Forms service. The Form class has setCollectEmail() and collectsEmail() — collection, not sending — and no method for sending, templating or receipting anything.

Three independent surfaces, one answer. If a blog shows you a Google Forms email-template editor, check whether it is an add-on.

What people build instead

Apps Script. An installable form-submit trigger reads the response and the message goes out through MailApp or GmailApp. MailApp.sendEmail() takes a recipient, a subject and a body, plus an options object with htmlBody, cc, bcc, name, replyTo and attachments. Note what that means: the “template” is a string in your own code and the merge is substitution you write yourself — no template store, no editor, no preview, which is precisely why the feature feels missing. Our notification rules guide breaks the pattern into its three parts (trigger, condition, send).

An add-on. The same trigger and the same MailApp, wrapped in somebody's interface and running inside your account on the scopes you grant it. Read Google Forms add-ons before installing one — particularly what the authorisation screen is really asking for.

The quota nobody plans for

Either route sends through Apps Script in your own Google account, against your own allowance. Google publishes the figures on Quotas for Google Services, and they are lower than people assume:

The unit is recipients, not messages. A gmail.com account sending one templated follow-up per submission runs dry at a hundred responses; copy two colleagues on each and it is thirty-three. A form with one good day on social media exhausts a consumer quota before lunch, and nothing in Google Forms says so — responses keep arriving and the emails simply stop, which from an inbox is indistinguishable from a broken script. MailApp.getRemainingDailyQuota(), documented as returning “the number of recipients you can send emails to for the rest of the day,” is the cheap defence. The notification rules guide carries the wider limits table.

How Forms+ does it on a phone

Forms+ is a native iPhone and iPad client for your real Google Forms. Because the thing people search for does not exist in Forms, it ships as a screen rather than a script you maintain. Two of its PRO tools do the job this page has been describing.

• Mail merge, under Automate in the editor's ••• menu — “Send a personalized email to everyone who responded.” A composer with Subject, Message, Send to, Options and Tracking sections, whose body takes {{Question Title}} tokens dropped in by an Insert field button, alongside {{respondentEmail}}, {{formTitle}}, {{responseId}} and {{timestamp}}. A Preview renders the merged message with sample answers before anything goes out, and the screen's own footer is candid about the ceiling this page circles: “Gmail enforces a daily send limit — large lists may stop early and can be re-run the next day.”
• Conditional email — “Send automatic emails based on what people answer.” Rules carry conditions (is, is not, contains, matches (regex), is answered) and a Match ALL / Match ANY switch, and the screen states that “To, Cc, Bcc, Subject and Body may contain {{Question Title}} tokens.” A Respondent autoresponder emails whoever submitted, and says plainly that it “requires the form to collect email addresses.”

Two nearby tools, so you do not hunt in the wrong one: Email respondents on pass appears only on quizzes and takes a pass mark, an optional subject and an optional message, with no tokens at all; Email responses is not a template in any sense — it exports CSV or XLS to the iOS Mail composer. All of these are PRO, work on the forms already in your Drive, and send from your own Google account, so Google's daily recipient quota applies exactly as it does to a script you write yourself.

When a mail-merge tool beats a form entirely

Sometimes the right answer is not to fix the form. If what you want is outbound email — one designed message to a list you already hold, with each person's details merged in — a form is the wrong shape of tool. It is built to receive; its email is bolted to the submission event. Reach for a mail-merge or campaign tool when most of these hold:

• You already have the list. Nothing waits on a submission; you have a spreadsheet of people and something to tell them.
• The design matters. You want a layout, a logo and a tested render across clients, not an HTML string in a script.
• Volume is above the quota. A real mailing list passes a hundred recipients a day on day one, and no amount of scripting raises that.
• You need delivery reporting. Bounces, opens and unsubscribes are a campaign tool's whole job and are absent from Apps Script mail.

Let each tool do its own job: the mailing tool sends the invite and carries the branding, the form collects the answers, and a short acknowledgement — or nothing at all, just a good confirmation message on screen — closes the loop. The reflex to make the form send everything is what sends people looking for a template that was never there.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google Forms have email templates?

No. Google documents no template, saved message or reusable body for any email a form sends. The send dialog takes a subject and a message typed fresh each time; the receipt has two values and no editable content; the notification is a single checkable item. The Forms API's FormSettings object has exactly two fields, and the Apps Script Form class has no email-sending method at all.

Can I change the subject line of a Google Forms notification email?

Not through Google Forms. The help page documents the notification as one item — “Get email notifications for new responses,” under the Responses tab's More menu — with no subject field, no body and no recipient list. Changing it means sending the mail yourself, from Apps Script or an add-on, where you compose the whole message.

How do I send a personalised email after someone submits a Google Form?

Not with a built-in setting, because Google publishes none. The documented routes are an installable form-submit trigger in Apps Script sending through MailApp or GmailApp, where you build the message yourself, or an add-on wrapping the same machinery. Google's own help page points the same way, recommending the Form notifications add-on to “send customized follow up emails to respondents.”

How many templated emails can a Google Form send per day?

Google's Quotas for Google Services page gives Apps Script 100 email recipients per day on a consumer account and 1,500 on Google Workspace, with 50 recipients per message either way. The count is recipients, not messages, so a follow-up copying two colleagues on every submission exhausts a consumer quota after thirty-three responses.