How to Add an Electronic Signature to a Google Form?

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Key Takeaways: How to Add an Electronic Signature to a Google Form

To Add an Electronic Signature to a Google Form

  1. Create a Google Form.
  2. Search and Install the electronic signature add-on.
  3. Use it to create your E-Signature.
  4. Confirm Signature.
  5. Customize the Form.

In today’s world, most of the important businesses take place online. They require authorized individuals’ authenticated and ensured electronic signatures to represent the grant of permission and authenticity of the document. In the same way, Google Forms which is used to collect the information online may require to obtain electronic signatures. In this article, we are going to demonstrate how to add an Electronic Signature to a Google Form with an easy step by step procedure.

What does Electronic Signature mean?

Since ancient times, most security parameters were individual dependent. Tokens were used to represent individuals. Later the era of ink came in and people used fingerprints. And then literacy rate rose up and people started using their signatures for guarantee and surety purposes. Signatures also represented one’s identity and authority. With the advancement of technology, we are living in an era of computers. Almost everything in our daily life is digital. And hence the signature which represents one’s identity has also become digital. Rather than wasting time printing and having the paper signed by authorized one’s to show the permission, we are now using electronic signatures to have the important papers signed digitally and hence saving lots of precious time and money.

Electronic Signature (or e-signature) refers to a signature that Is transmitted electronically. It is attached to a document digitally as verification or some other intent of the sender. A lot of online as well as offline tools are available for this purpose. Some tools even save the signee IP address to ensure the validity of the signee. In this way, security is obtained and the important documents remain secure and protected.

Google Forms may not be the best choice for obtaining or adding an electronic signature. On one hand, it does not provide this feature directly and requires the use of add-ons; on the other, these electronic signatures are not authenticated and secure themselves unless they are using a specialized tool for obtaining these signatures. Despite all that, using the electronic signatures in a Google Form can make it look more professional and provide a better aesthetic and hence we may decide to add in the electronic signature. In this article, we will figure out how we can add an electronic signature in a Google Form.

Why do we add an e-signature to a Google Form?

E-signature is attached to documents electronically. It is a fast and easy way to sign electronic documents. With e-signatures, there is no need to print documents in hard form and have them signed manually. This way, we can sign the documents without spending much effort, time and money. 

Google Forms collect useful information from our respondents. Asking for the respondents’ electronic signatures along with the form can mean a form of recognition and consent that the entered information is correct and up to date. This way, we can use electronic signatures in Google Forms. On the other hand, we may decide to display the electronic signatures of the form owner or a business authority to prove that the Google Form is authentic and data collection will be used for the useful purposes. It also provides a good aesthetic when a respondent sees the electronic signature of the relevant authority at the end of the form. And along with that, it gives respondents’ a sense of security that the form is authentic and provided by authorized individuals. This way, they are willing to give out the best information they possess. 

Despite all of the above reasons, electronic signatures cannot be directly possessed by Google Forms as it does not provide this feature directly. Electronic Signatures can be created and added in Google Forms with the help of add-ons. There are many add-ons that provide this feature. Any of them can be used for adding electronic signatures to the Google Form. With the help of these add-ons, we can not ensure if the signee was actually the real person. And hence, these are not likely to be used for legal purposes. In this article, we are going to demonstrate how we can add electronic signatures to our Google Form.

How to add an Electronic Signature to a Google Form?

Although Google Forms does not directly allow adding the electronic signatures, we can add them to our form with the help of add-ons. These electronic signatures may not have a high amount of security or authentication still it provides a good aesthetic to the respondents’ when they meet a Google Form signed by the concerned authority. We can add Electronic Signature to our Google Form with the help of add-ons from Google marketplace. Let’s create a Google Form to demonstrate how to add an Electronic Signature to it.

Create a Google Form

Step 1: Go to Google Form’s website.
To create a Google Form, visit Google Forms website. I have created a hyperlink here.

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Now there are two buttons that you can click on to start creating your Google Form.

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There are two buttons for “Go to forms”. Clicking on either will take you to your Google Forms. 

Step 2: Create your form using any template of your choice

After you click on “Go to forms”, a new window will open. Here are a few templates offered. You can use any of these if you’d like. There are more templates which you can see by clicking on “Template Gallery” as:

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Click on “Template Gallery” to have a look of all available templates as:

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Here, you can see more templates which you can use for your Google Form.

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We will make a blank form for this demonstration. Let’s go back and click on “Blank” to create an empty and blank form.

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Step 3: Set up your Google Form

Now, you have your blank Google Form as:

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It can be completely customized according to user requirements. Let us move on to add an electronic signature to our form.

Now that our Google Form is created, let’s go ahead and check out how to add Electronic Signature to our form.

Install the add-on for electronic signature

The purpose of this demonstration is adding the electronic signature and so we will not focus on the customization of our form here. You may read our article How to create a Google Form for obtaining information on how the form can be customized better. In case you are a mobile phone user, check out our article on How to create a Google Form on a Mobile Phone for more details.

Now, we are going to add Electronic Signature to our Google Form using add-ons. Let’s get our add-on first.
Click on the “three-dots” icon to open the More options menu.

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Dropdown menu appears as:

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Click on “Get add-ons” to get the required add-on.

how to add an electronic signature to a google form 10Now, Google marketplace is open. 

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There is a search bar, search for “Signature” and press enter key.

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Now, we have lots of add-ons that can help with adding e-signatures to our Google Form.

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We can use any of these add-ons as long as the purpose is served.

Let’s use the “Signature” add-on by clicking on it as:

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Now it will display the properties of this add-on. Click “install” to start the installation process for this add-on as:

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Now that the add-on is installed. Let’s add e-signature to our form. 

Use the add-on to add Electronic Signature

Click on the add-on button displayed a Puzzle icon on top right corner of the form as:

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You can see all of the add-ons installed in the form of dropdown as shown below.
Click on “Signature” for adding e-signature as:

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You will get a small pop-up screen. Click on “Start” to get started as:

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Now, click on “login” to login through the Signature add-on.

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Now there are different options available, that includes single and multiple signatures.
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Let’s add a single signature by clicking on it as:

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Now, there is some information that needs to be added before the signature can be added, that is Email Address and Full name of the Signatory as displayed below:

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Fill in the details or alternatively, you can self-sign the form if you want by scrolling down. Here, we are going to add the concerned authority (Form Owner, in our case) to the Google Form which will be displayed to all respondents. So, let us go with ‘Self Sign’ option as:

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Add the information such as Name to proceed.

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Now, click on “Open signing page” to go to the page where you will sign an electronic signature.

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A new window will open which is for the signing purpose. Sign in the blank area. The area is wide and it is quite easy to place your signature in here.

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You can use the Mouse or Touchpad of your PC to place your signatures here. You can also choose to use a mobile device or tablet to place signatures easily.

When you’re done, click “Confirm signature” in the bottom right corner as:

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You will notice that e-signature is added to your Google Form!
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Practice more for better Electronic Signature. Or you may also configure an electronic pen device to make your signature more attractive.

Notes

  • A Google Form owner or collaborator may add an electronic signature at the end of the form to provide a sense of security and better aesthetic to its respondents.
  • Google Forms do not provide the feature of adding electronic signatures to its forms. But users can use the Google Marketplace add-ons to add electronic signatures to the Google Forms.
  • Authenticity of the signee cannot be achieved solely with the help of these add-ons and hence these electronic signatures are not used for legal purposes in general.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Does Google Forms allow us to use Electronic Signature in it?

Google Forms does not directly allow us to add electronic signatures in our forms. But we can add them to the form with the help of add-ons. There are many add-ons that can be utilized for this purpose. In this article, we demonstrated how a Google Form owner adds his or her electronic signature (self-signatures) to his or her Google Form to provide a sense of authenticity to its respondents.

Which add-on can be utilized for adding electronic signatures to the Google Form?

There are many add-ons that provide us with the facility of adding electronic signatures to our documents. A lot of them can be found and installed using Google Marketplace. For this demonstration, we used the add-on ‘Signature’ to elaborate how to add a self-sign in a Google Form.

Are electronic signatures added in Google Form secure and authentic?

Although we have got ways to add electronic signatures to Google Forms with the help of add-ons. We cannot trust the authenticity of them unless we use specialized tools exclusively made for the purpose of ensuring authenticity of electronic signatures. Such tools use a lot of secure methods for ensuring authenticity and not only these but also record the IP address of the signee.

Does Google Form act normally after adding electronic signatures?

Yes, there is no change in the working of the Google Form after adding the electronic signatures. The form can still be shared, previewed, filled and submitted by respondents. And later, response analysis can be obtained in the same way.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed that although the Google Forms does not directly provide the feature of  adding the electronic signatures to the Google Forms. It still allows us to do so using add-ons. There are many add-ons available in the Google Marketplace for the mentioned purpose. In this article, we used the add-on ‘Signature’ to serve our purpose of self-signing the Google Form. This way, the electronic signatures appeared at the bottom of the form providing the respondents with a sense of authenticity of the form itself. We also learned how we can create an electronic signature and how they can be added to the Google Form.

We discussed the following in detail:

  • Create a Google Form
  • Install the add-on for Electronic Signature
  • Use the add-on to add Electronic Signature

Thanks for reading! 

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Widad Khan

Hi, I am Widad Khan. I was born and raised in Pakistan. I have always loved the field of Computer Sciences and since I was a kid, I would say I wanna grow up to be a scientist, now this term is mostly related to "Computer Scientist" and not scientist alone. I am pursuing my Bachelor Degree in Computer Sciences from GCU, Lahore. I have always loved keeping records of different types of data. Earlier, I would use MS Excel for that. But with the advancements in Google Sheets, my work has become much easier. And also it's very easy to share and coordinate data with fellows and coordinates.

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