The Electric Educator: Restrict Answer Length in Google Forms

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Restrict Answer Length in Google Forms

Many times educators need to encourage / remind students to type in complete sentences or to limit their response to certain word count. A recent update to Google forms makes this possible - and it's easy to do!

How to set a min / max response length in Google forms.
  1. Create a short answer or paragraph type question. 
  2. Turn on data validation (click the "snowman" dots)
  3. Select min / max length (in characters)
  4. Include an error message to remind students of the length requirement. 
Note: the length setting is a CHARACTER count, not a word count. The count includes punctuation and spaces (this sentence is 103 characters).

If students exceed or fail to meet the required character count they will see the custom error message that you have entered. If this is a required question, they will not be able to submit the form until their response meets the criteria.


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