However, since we’ll need to search all of the text in the document to replace it, it is best to make the text you want to replace unique in the document. Best Practices for Template Tags in Google Docs We make a document that acts as a template, then we look for certain pieces of text within the template document, then replace those pieces of text with live data when our form is submitted. The other way involves the strategy we’re taking here. While that is possible, I found it very difficult to do, especially when trying to create a document with an kind of sophistication or styling. One way is to programmatically create the document using code, meaning we would add the different document elements one by one using a script. There are several ways to populate a Google Doc using Google Apps Script. There are a few important things to note about this template though. Every time a form is submitted to the spreadsheet, our script will make a copy of this template and replace parts of the text with the data submitted to the form.Īs you can see, this is a pretty basic document, but since we are just making a copy, your template could include lots of different styling, images, etc. Creating a Google Doc TemplateĪfter creating the form and the spreadsheet, I created a Google Doc in the same folder that will serve as our template document. I created a spreadsheet to accept the responses, as that is ultimately where our code will live that will generate the Google Doc. To get started, we’ll need to create a Google Form to accept submissions and a Google Doc to act as our template.įor this example, I just created a basic form to accept some data that looks like this:Īs you can see nothing fancy going on here. We’re going to take a Google Form submission and then use that data to populate a custom template in Google Docs. In this tutorial, we’re going to look at a workflow that should have a large swath of utility for people who read this site. Now that Apps Script has matured, it’s time to revisit some of those early desires. When I first got started with Apps Script almost 6 years ago, there were lots of things I wanted to do, but just didn’t yet have the skills to figure out or tried but ran into a limitation on the Apps Script platform.

It’s been awhile since I have written anything to do with Google Apps Script, so I decided to start exploring some features of the Apps Script world that are new to me. Septem| Posted in Google Apps Script, Google Drive, Google Sheets

Auto populate word document fields