Google Forms can email respondents a copy of their answers, but you can’t change that email. The subject is the form title, the body is a plain list of answers, and you can’t add a message, a logo or an attachment. To send your own confirmation (“You’re registered, Ana. Here’s your ticket.”), you need a small script. This guide sets one up for free in about 5 minutes, with no add-on.
It uses Form Auto-Reply, a free, MIT-licensed Apps Script.
In the form editor, open Settings → Responses and turn on Collect email addresses. Alternatively, add a short-answer question with “email” in its title, such as “Your email”. The script uses the first column whose title contains “email”.
In the form, open the Responses tab and click Link to Sheets. Open the spreadsheet. Each question is a column, titled with the question’s text.
Code.gs and click Save.Compose a new email in Gmail and leave it in Drafts. Wherever you want an answer from the form, put the question’s title in double braces, exactly as it appears in the spreadsheet’s header row:
Subject:
You're registered, {{Name}}Hi {{Name}},
Thanks for signing up for {{Which session?}}. Your ticket is attached.
Bold text, links, your logo and attachments all carry over to every reply. Multi-line answers keep their line breaks.
Go to the Form Responses sheet and choose 📨 Form Auto-Reply → Turn On Auto-Reply. Type the draft’s subject line. The first time, Google asks for permission. Because it’s your own script, it shows “Google hasn’t verified this app”: click Advanced → Go to (your project name) → Allow.
Now submit the form once yourself, then choose 📨 Form Auto-Reply → Send Test to Myself to check the result in your inbox.
From now on, every respondent gets your email a few seconds after they submit. A note on their email cell records when it was sent.
Is it free? Yes. It’s MIT licensed and runs on your own Google account. Gmail allows scripts about 100 recipients a day on a personal account and 1,500 on Google Workspace (Google’s quotas).
Should I turn off Google’s own response receipts? If you don’t want respondents to get two emails, yes: in Settings → Responses, set Send responders a copy of their response to Off.
Can I attach a file? Yes. Attach it to the Gmail draft, and every reply includes it.
Can the reply depend on an answer? Not in this script; everyone gets the same draft with their answers filled in. For “different email per choice”, use two forms or edit the script.
Does it email people who responded before I set it up? No, only new responses. To email earlier respondents, use Sheets Mail Merge on the response sheet.
How do I stop it? 📨 Form Auto-Reply → Turn Off.
Get the script on GitHub · Also free: Mail Merge for Google Sheets · Doc Merge: PDFs from Google Sheets