The Problem with Repetitive Forms
Google Forms is an excellent tool for collecting data, whether it is for customer feedback, event registration, or internal IT helpdesk tickets. However, if you are sending a form to someone whose information you already know—such as their name, employee ID, or department—forcing them to manually type that data into the form is an annoying user experience.
Furthermore, relying on users to type their own Employee IDs often results in typos, which breaks your backend spreadsheet sorting and data analysis.
Google provides a hidden feature called the Pre-filled Link. This allows you, the form creator, to generate a custom URL. When the user clicks this specific URL, the Google Form opens with specific text boxes, checkboxes, or dropdown menus already filled out for them.
Step 1: Create Your Google Form
Before you can generate a pre-filled link, the architecture of your form must be completely finished. Open Google Forms and build out all your questions.
For this example, assume your form has three questions:
- Employee Name (Short Answer)
- Department (Dropdown)
- IT Issue Description (Paragraph)
Step 2: Generate the Pre-filled Link
Once the form is built, you need to access the special pre-fill interface.
- In the top right corner of the Google Forms editor, click the three vertical dots (More menu).
- Select Get pre-filled link.
- A new tab will open. It looks exactly like your live form, but there is a banner at the top that says “Pre-fill responses, then click Get link.”
Step 3: Enter the Default Data
Now, act as if you are filling out the form, but only fill in the fields that you want to be pre-populated for the user.
For example, if you want to create a custom link exclusively for the Marketing department, click the “Department” dropdown and select “Marketing”. Leave the “Employee Name” and “IT Issue Description” fields completely blank.
Scroll to the very bottom of the page and click the blue Get link button.
Step 4: Copy and Distribute the Link
After clicking the button, a small notification will appear in the bottom left corner of your screen that says “Share this link to include pre-filled responses.” Click the COPY LINK button next to it.
The URL you just copied is significantly longer than a standard Google Forms link. If you paste it into a text editor, you will notice it contains the specific data you entered embedded directly within the URL structure (e.g., &entry.1234567=Marketing).
You can now email this specific link to the Marketing team. When they click it, the form will load on their screen, the Department field will already say “Marketing,” and they will only need to type their name and their issue. They are free to change the pre-filled answer if they need to, but the default state saves them time and prevents typos.
Advanced Use: Mail Merge
The true power of pre-filled links is combining them with spreadsheet formulas. If you look at the structure of the pre-filled URL, the entry.1234567= portion always correlates to a specific question box.
If you have a Google Sheet containing 100 employee names, you can use a basic concatenation formula to append each employee’s name to the end of the pre-filled URL structure. This allows you to instantly generate 100 highly customized, unique URLs—one for each employee—ensuring perfect data integrity when they submit the form.