How to Automatically Add WPForms to Google Sheets

Searching for a way to connect WPForms to Google Sheets so that you can automatically add new submissions to a spreadsheet?

In this post, we’ll show you how you can use Uncanny Automator to add new form submissions to Google Sheets – even if you’re using the free version of WPForms! It also works with the premium version, of course.

This method doesn’t rely on Zapier and it gives you a lot of flexibility, even letting you use conditional logic to only add submissions if users answer the form in a certain way. And best of all, there are no per-transaction fees!

Uncanny Automator lets you automate all types of actions on your WordPress site using “recipes”. A recipe has two parts:

• Trigger – this can be anything, like a person submitting a form by WPForms.
• Action – this is what Uncanny Automator does after the trigger. It can also be anything, like adding a new row in Google Sheets with data from your form.

You can use this type of automation for a ton of different form types:

• Surveys – feed submissions into Sheets for easy analysis and reporting.
• Registration – add new registrants to Sheets so that you can easily keep track of them.
• Lead capture – once you add people to Sheets, you can easily store their data and add it to another tool if needed.
• …more! – this isn’t a complete list, and you might have your own use cases.

Keep reading and we’ll show you step-by-step how to set it up…

How to Connect WPForms to Google Sheets With Uncanny Automator

Uncanny Automator has both a free version and a paid version with more features. You can automate WPForms submissions with the free version, but you’ll need the paid version to add data to Google Sheets, which means you’ll need the paid version to follow this tutorial.

The paid version starts at $149 and includes all the triggers and actions – that means you can use it for a lot more than just connecting WPForms to Google Sheets – check out all the triggers and actions here. The paid version also supports form submissions by anonymous users. And unlike Zapier, there are no per-transaction fees!

The basic process for connecting WPForms to Google Sheets is as follows:

1. Set up your spreadsheet in Google Sheets.
2. Connect the Uncanny Automator plugin to your Google account (so that it can access Google Sheets).
3. Create a recipe.
4. Choose your trigger – a new form submission.
5. Choose your action – create a row in Google Sheets.
6. Publish your recipe.

Note – Uncanny Automator only lets you add new rows to Google Sheets – you can’t automatically edit or delete rows (though you could manually edit or delete information from the Sheets interface).

To get started, make sure that you’ve purchased and installed the premium version of Uncanny Automator.

We’ll also assume that you’ve already created the form that you want to use with WPForms. There’s no extra configuration in the WPForms interface, so you can just set that up like you normally would.

1. Set Up Your Spreadsheet in Google Sheets

Before you set things up in WordPress, you first need to set up the spreadsheet to which you want to add data from your form.

There’s nothing complex here – you just need to add column headers for all of the different data that you want to collect. You can add data from all the form fields or you can just choose specific form fields to add to Google Sheets.

You can also add form metadata, such as the date and time that a person submitted the form.

To get started, create a new sheet. Then, add a column heading for each piece of information that you want to store.

For example, if your form looks like this:

Then you would set up Google Sheets like below if you want to capture all of the form fields and the submission date in Google Sheets:

2. Connect Your Google Account

Now, you can head to your WordPress dashboard to set up everything else.

First, you need to connect Uncanny Automator to your Google Account so that it can access Google Sheets.

Go to Automator → Settings → Google and click the Connect an account button:

This will launch the standard Google authorization process – just choose the Google account you want to use and click Allow to grant Uncanny Automator the permissions that it needs:

You’ll then need to confirm those permissions again:

And then you should be taken back to your WordPress dashboard and see a success message.

3. Create a New Recipe

Next, go to Automator → Add new to create a new recipe.

You have two options for your recipe type:

1. Logged-in users – choose this if only logged-in WordPress users will fill out your form.
2. Everyone – choose this if you’ll be having visitors fill out your form. Most WPForms users will fit into this scenario.

You can also give your recipe a name to help you remember it.

4. Configure Your Trigger (New WPForms Submissions)

Next, you need to choose your trigger. If you have WPForms installed, you should see an option for WPForms:

Then, you can choose between two options:

1. You can add all WPForms submissions (to a specific form) to Google Sheets.
2. You can only add a submission if there’s a specific value in a certain field (conditional logic).

We’ll add all form submissions in this tutorial, but the basic idea is the same with conditional logic:

Then, choose the specific form that you want to use from the drop-down and save your changes:

Now, it’s time to configure the action.

5. Configure Your Action (Add a Row to Google Sheets)

If you set up a logged-in recipe type, you just need to configure your action next, which is adding a row to Google Sheets.

If you set up an anonymous recipe (which is what most WPForms users should choose), you’ll also need to route your action through a WordPress user. You can use Automator to create a user based on a WPForms submission, but for this example let’s assume a user isn’t directly tied to the recipe, so we’ll create a WordPress placeholder user and route data through that user.

This is a bit of a quirk in how Uncanny Automator functions when there’s no WordPress user is involved, since Automator always expects to run recipes on users.

Set Up User (Anonymous Recipe)

First, create a Subscriber user in WordPress. You can use any details you want, but after creation, note the ID of the user. (When you edit a user you’ll see a URL like this in the address bar: /wp-admin/user-edit.php?user_id=261. In this example, “261” is the ID of the user that you will need for the next steps.)

Let’s do the user part first – again, you’ll only see this if you chose the Anonymous recipe type in Step #2.

Choose Existing user:

Set the ID equal to the value of the placeholder user you created and then choose Do nothing.

Set Up Action

Next, click the Add action button below and choose Google Sheets:

Then, choose to Create a row:

Now, you need to use the drop-downs to choose the spreadsheet to which you want to add content – you can search for the name to find it.

Once you’ve selected the spreadsheet and worksheet, click the Get columns button:

This will import the actual columns from your spreadsheet. Now, you can map the fields from your form and basic metadata to the columns in your spreadsheet by adding dynamic tokens.

You can use Common tokens to insert basic information about the form or use Trigger tokens for more specific information. To fill out the Google Sheet, use Trigger tokens:

When you’re finished, it should look something like this:

6. Publish Your Recipe to Start Automating

Now, you’re ready to make your automation live. To do that, click the toggle in the sidebar:

You can give it a test now. Go to your form and submit some dummy data:

As soon as you submit the form, you should instantly see the information in Google Sheets:

Connect WPForms to Google Sheets Today

Whether you’re using the free or paid version of WPForms, Uncanny Automator makes it easy to automatically add new form submissions to Google Sheets.

But here’s the neat thing:

Beyond Google Sheets, Uncanny Automator can also help you automate WPForms in lots of other ways, such as registering form submitters for a GoToTrainer session, updating user profile information, creating user registration forms, and lots more. To get some more ideas, check out this page.

Still have any questions about how to set this up? Let us know in the comments!