Reordering Questions In Google Forms

• November
• 25

9:27 am Google

One issue that I have run into when using Google Forms is that reordering questions doesn’t always work as planned. I’ll be editing a form and I’ll add a new question. The question will be added to the end of the form but I want it to be higher up in the question order. So, I drag the question up several spaces and hit save. What I have sometimes found when I go to the live form is that the question I moved isn’t always being displayed in the place I put it. Other times the question has been moved, but the question whose place it took has been bounced down to the end. The form works just fine, but the ordering is a little odd: The questions are in one order on the edit screen, and in another on the live form page.

I’ve done some digging and found that other people have run into this problem. I have also had this problem come up while using IE, Firefox, and Safari, so it seems to be browser agnostic.

After a bunch of tinkering this morning, I think I have found a solution:

If you’re going to move a question, do it one line at a time and hit save after every line moved. This can certainly be an annoyance if you have to move a question a bunch of spaces, but it’s certainly much more annoying to have to undo some crazy ordering mess.

If you have a question that is in one place on your edit screen and in another on your live form, move the question around one space at a time (hitting save after every move) until its placement on your edit screen matches it’s placement on your live form. Once the placements match, make sure you only move the question one space at a time and that you hit save between every move.

I recommend refreshing your live form every time you move a question a single space. As far as I can tell the ordering should stay exactly how it is on your edit screen, but it can’t hurt to be sure. This will help you avoid haveing to untangle a question ordering mess if you make a mistake and drag a question’s position more than one space.

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