Google Forms presentation settings

Last updated September 2026 · ~8 minute read

Settings › Presentation is one panel with five controls in it, and Google documents those five in five different places. One is explained on the main help page, one only in an accessibility guide, one on a sharing page, one exclusively in Apps Script, and one across two help articles that never mention the other four. There is no single Google page that lists the section's contents. This is that list.

Everything below is what Google itself publishes, with a link to the page it publishes it on. Where Google says nothing, this page says so rather than guessing. Each setting also has a guide of its own on this site, linked from its section, so this page stays a map rather than a re-run. For the whole Settings tab — all three groups, and which controls reach outside their own group — see Google Forms form settings.

Opening the section

At the top of the form, click Settings, then next to Presentation click the Down arrow. Google gives that path in those words on both Edit your form and Publish & share your form with responders. Everything described below lives in that one panel.

What Google publishes about each control

We read the Google Docs Editors Help pages Edit your form, Publish & share your form with responders, Use Google Forms with a screen reader and Autosave your response progress on a Google Form; the Apps Script Class Form reference; and the Google Forms REST API v1 reference. Here is the result, control by control.

The one page that tries to list the section

The one Google help page we could find that enumerates this panel is not one you would think to open: Use Google Forms with a screen reader. Under a heading called Manage presentation it names four things — Show progress bar, Shuffle questions, Provide a confirmation message and Provide a summary.

That list is worth reading twice, because it is both the most complete inventory Google offers and visibly not a reliable one. It omits the respond-again link and the autosave switch entirely, and it calls the shuffle setting Shuffle questions where the editor's own label reads Shuffle question order. No Google page reconciles the two labels or completes the list. If you have ever gone looking for a definitive description of this panel and come away unsure whether you had found it, that is why.

Show progress bar

A plain on/off switch with no configuration. The screen reader guide's list is the only place in the help centre we found it named at all — the Edit your form page, which gives you the path into Presentation, does not mention the progress bar anywhere.

The important gap is that Google never publishes what the bar measures. Not questions, not sections, not percentage complete — the unit is simply never stated, in the help centre or the API references. Apps Script's two sentences, “Sets whether the form has a progress bar” and “Determines whether the form displays a progress bar”, are the most precise description that exists. That silence has real consequences once a form has sections or branching, and it is the subject of its own guide here: the Google Forms progress bar.

Shuffle question order

The help centre does cover this one, and the coverage amounts to a single warning. Edit your form tells you to turn it on under “Form presentation”, and then adds: “Important: If you want your questions to appear in a specific order, you should not shuffle your questions.”

The more useful sentence is in Apps Script, where setShuffleQuestions is described as setting “whether the order of the questions on each page of the form is randomized”. Note each page. A page in Apps Script terminology is what the editor calls a section, so the randomisation is contained inside a section rather than moving questions across the whole form. The help centre never says this; the API reference does, in passing. There is more on what shuffling quietly costs you — and on the separate per-question option shuffle, which is a different control living somewhere else entirely — in shuffle question order.

Confirmation message

Not a switch but an edit field, and Google documents it with a complete click-path. Publish & share your form with responders spells it out: open the form, click Settings, click the Down arrow next to Presentation, click Edit next to Confirmation message, type, and click Save.

What Google does not publish is anything about what the field accepts — whether a URL inside it becomes a clickable link, whether any formatting survives, or how long the message may be. If those matter to you, the confirmation message guide covers what is known and what is not.

Show link to submit another response

This is the strange one. The switch decides whether a respondent who has just submitted sees an offer to fill the form in again — the difference between a one-shot registration and a form somebody logs three entries into without reopening the link.

We could not find it named on any Google help page. It is absent from Edit your form, absent from Publish & share your form with responders, and absent from the screen reader guide's Manage presentation list. The only place Google documents it is the Apps Script Form class, which carries both a setter and a getter: setShowLinkToRespondAgain(enabled), described as setting “whether the form displays a link to submit another response after a respondent completes the form”, and hasRespondAgainLink() alongside it.

Worth knowing before you go looking for it: this setting and Limit to 1 response are in direct conflict, since one offers a second submission and the other forbids it. Google does not document how the two interact. Limiting responses covers what the limit itself does.

Disable autosave for all respondents

The only control here aimed at the respondent's side of the form rather than its appearance. By default Google saves a half-finished response as a draft: “draft responses to forms are autosaved for 30 days after a responder's last edit or until the form is complete, whichever comes first”, per Edit your form. The clock therefore restarts on each edit rather than running from when the draft was created.

The companion page, Autosave your response progress on a Google Form, adds the two conditions that matter. Drafts are tied to a signed-in Google Account. And “If you're offline, autosave doesn't work” — which is worth knowing before you tell an audience their progress is safe. If you switch the feature off, respondents see Saving disabled at the top of the form; Google's advice to them is to contact the form owner.

Apps Script has no method for this one. There is no autosave or draft setter anywhere in the Form class, so unlike the other four, this switch cannot be scripted at all. Full detail in autosave and drafts.

None of it is reachable from the Forms API

If you are building an integration, the whole panel is off-limits. The Forms REST API v1 FormSettings object carries exactly two fields, quizSettings and emailCollectionType. No progress bar, no shuffle, no confirmation message, no respond-again link, no autosave. Apps Script is the only programmatic route Google publishes for four of the five, and there is no route at all for the fifth.

The same panel on an iPhone

Forms+ is a native iPhone and iPad client for your real Google Forms, and its form settings screen carries a Presentation section with three of these switches — Show progress bar, Shuffle question order and Show link to submit another response — writing each change back to the same form in your Drive rather than to a copy. The confirmation message gets its own section just below, as an editable text field. The app's settings screen does not carry the autosave switch.

One difference worth flagging, because it is a decision the app makes rather than a Google behaviour: Forms+ greys out Show link to submit another response while Limit to 1 response is on, and turning the limit on switches the respond-again link off. That resolves the conflict described above in one direction, deliberately, instead of letting you save a form that asks for one response and then invites a second.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the Presentation section in Google Forms settings?

At the top of the form, click Settings, then next to “Presentation” click the Down arrow. Google gives that exact path on both the Edit your form help page and the Publish & share your form with responders page.

How many settings are in the Presentation section?

Google never publishes a complete list, which is the odd part. The closest thing to an inventory is the screen reader guide, whose “Manage presentation” heading names Show progress bar, Shuffle questions, Provide a confirmation message and Provide a summary — and that list omits the respond-again link and the autosave switch entirely, while calling the shuffle setting by a different name than the editor does.

Can I change Presentation settings with the Google Forms API?

No. The Forms REST API v1 FormSettings object carries only quizSettings and emailCollectionType. No progress bar, shuffle, confirmation message or respond-again field exists anywhere in it. Apps Script is the only programmatic route Google publishes, and even it has no autosave method.

Why is "Show link to submit another response" missing from Google's help pages?

We could not find it named on any Google Docs Editors Help page — not on Edit your form, not on Publish & share your form with responders, not in the screen reader guide's Manage presentation list. The only place Google documents it is the Apps Script Form class, as setShowLinkToRespondAgain(enabled) and hasRespondAgainLink().

Does shuffling questions shuffle them across sections?

Apps Script's wording is that the setting randomises “the order of the questions on each page of the form” — on each page, not across the whole form. A page in that sentence is what the editor calls a section, so the shuffle is contained within a section rather than moving questions between them. The help centre gives no equivalent sentence; it only warns that if you want your questions to appear in a specific order, you should not shuffle them.