Troubleshooting Guides
Find solutions to common issues below.
There are a number of reasons why the add-on may not send notifications to your recipients. In order to identify what is causing your issue, answer the following question and follow the steps to resolve the issue.
Which of the following is true when a new form submission is made?
- Within the spreadsheet that is linked to your form:
- Ensure the Timestamp column of the 'Form Responses' sheet is positioned in column A. The add-on requires it to remain in Column A at all times. Though, it can be hidden if you prefer.
- Ensure there is no sheet or range protection that prevents the administrator's account from writing to the spreadsheet.
- Ensure there have been no manual changes to the recipients in the 'Detailed Approval Records' sheet.
- Wait up to 2 hours for the form submission to be processed by the add-on. There may be delays in Google Forms™ processing the request, which means the add-on could not process it immediately. When this occurs, it will be processed within 1–2 hours of the original submission time.
- If it has been more than 2 hours and you have checked for issues within the spreadsheet already, open the add-on, click Settings, then click Account.
- If the add-on is ON, toggle the add-on OFF and then toggle it back ON. Google triggers can become stale when authorization is revoked or expires - this process resets the trigger that allows the add-on to run again on your account.
- If the add-on is OFF, toggle it back ON. If you reached your monthly quota and the add-on was automatically disabled, you will need to reactivate the add-on on each form that uses the add-on.
- Within the spreadsheet that is linked to your form, ensure the question names are positioned in Row 1 of the 'Form Responses' sheet. The add-on requires them to remain in Row 1 at all times;
- Ensure each question in your Google Form has a unique name (even if they are positioned in different sections);
- If you use recipient logic, check to ensure the logic set up against the recipient looks correct and the logic value entered exactly matches the option selected by the requestor;
- If you use a recipient look-up table, check to ensure the option selected by the requestor exactly matches the value entered in Column A of your look-up table;
- If you use dynamic recipients, check to ensure the dynamic recipient question was completed by the form respondent - questions linked to a dynamic recipient should always be mandatory questions;
- If you use dynamic recipients with a checkbox question type, make sure the Google Form options do not contain a comma (","). Google Forms separates multiple checkbox selections with a comma, so an option that itself contains a comma will cause the add-on to split it incorrectly and fail to match the recipient;
- Check to ensure the recipient's email address is a valid email address (i.e check for typos);
- If the setting 'Remove duplicate recipients' is enabled within the 'Settings' tab of the add-on, the add-on will look for the duplicate recipients and automatically remove them to prevent recipients from having to respond more than once. When testing, make sure to disable this setting or use different email addresses. Note, the add-on will only remove duplicates if the role types are the same.
- If you use Google for email:
- Check the 'Sent Items' of your Google account. All emails sent by the add-on will be visible from your Sent Items (unless you have selected emails to be sent from the formapprovals.com domain when subscribing).
- If the email is in your Sent Items, but never reached the recipient's inbox:
- Make sure the recipient's email address is not an alias address of the admin account. Gmail does not include emails sent to an alias in your inbox;
- Make sure the sender's email address is added as a contact in the recipient's address book to avoid emails reaching junk;
- Contact your internal IT Mail Administrator as they can look to see what corporate filters are preventing the emails from reaching the end user's inbox.
- If the email is not in your Sent Items, you would have reached the email quota provided by Google. Google provides Google Workspace™ accounts a limit of 1,500 emails per day and Gmail accounts 100 emails per day. We notify you when you are getting close to this limit. If you reach the limit, consider splitting your forms over different accounts, or having emails sent from the formapprovals.com domain.
- If you do not use Google for email:
- If you are on a paid plan, make sure you selected 'send emails from formapprovals.com' when subscribing. For further info, refer to the FAQs on our pricing page;
- Make sure noreply@mail.formapprovals.com is added as a contact in your recipient's address book to prevent emails reaching junk;
- Contact your internal IT Mail Administrator as they can look to see what corporate filters are preventing the emails from reaching the end user's inbox.
- If the recipient misplaced the email, you can have it resent from your My Forms tracking page by following these steps.
If you need further help contact us and add support@formapprovals.com as a temporary collaborator to your Google Form and Google Sheet™ that is linked to your form, and we will be happy to review your settings and provide guidance specific to your form.
If the requestor is not being notified:
- Make sure 'Collect email addresses' is enabled in your Google Form settings. Once this setting is enabled, the add-on will send notifications to the requestor on future form responses;
- Make sure there were no typos in the email address entered by the requestor;
- If you use Google for email:
- Check the 'Sent Items' of your Google account. All emails sent by the add-on will be visible from your Sent Items (unless you have selected emails to be sent from the formapprovals.com domain when subscribing).
- If the email is in your Sent Items, but never reached the requestor's inbox:
- Make sure the requestor's email address is not an alias address of the admin account. Gmail does not include emails sent to an alias in your inbox;
- Make sure the sender's email address is added as a contact in the requestor's address book to avoid emails reaching junk;
- Contact your internal IT Mail Administrator as they can look to see what corporate filters are preventing the emails from reaching the end user's inbox.
- If the email is not in your Sent Items, you would have reached the email quota provided by Google. Google provides Google Workspace accounts a limit of 1,500 emails per day and Gmail accounts 100 emails per day. We notify you when you are getting close to this limit. If you reach the limit, consider splitting your forms over different accounts, or having emails sent from the formapprovals.com domain.
- If you do not use Google for email:
- If you are on a paid plan, make sure you selected 'send emails from formapprovals.com' when subscribing. For further info, refer to the FAQs on our pricing page.
- Add noreply@mail.formapprovals.com as a contact in your requestor's address book.
- If the requestor misplaced the email, you can have it resent from your My Forms tracking page by following these steps.
If you see the message "We're sorry, a server error occurred. Please wait a bit and try again", a blank screen, or "drive refused to connect" when opening the add-on sidebar, this occurs when you are signed in with multiple Google accounts. This is a known issue impacting all add-ons. From your Google Form, click your profile picture (in the top right corner), then click Sign-out. Then, sign back in with one account.
If you are signed into the Chrome browser with a 'Profile' that is different to the account you set up the add-on with, you will need to create a Chrome profile for the email account used with the add-on. Alternatively, you can use a Guest / Incognito window.
This can occur when attempting to open the add-on too quickly after the Google Form is loaded, as add-ons are the last thing to load on the page. Try reloading the page and waiting 10–15 seconds before trying to open the add-on.
This can also occur when signed in with multiple Google accounts. Make sure you are only signed in with one Google account. From your Google Form, click your profile picture (in the top right corner), then click Sign-out. Then, sign back in with one account.
- Check to ensure the value between the << and >> markers exactly matches your form response question (respecting spaces and upper / lower case)
- Check to ensure the markers do not have any formatting. To be sure, remove all formatting from the markers using the 'Clear formatting' option.
- Check to ensure your Google Form question doesn't contain any line breaks.
- Make sure each question in your Google Form has a unique name (even if they are positioned in different sections).
- Open the spreadsheet that is linked to your form, then open the Form Responses sheet (note, you may have renamed it). Within this sheet, check to ensure:
- the column headings are positioned in Row 1
- the Timestamp column is positioned in Column A
- the Request # and Overall Status columns are on the right hand side of form response data. The add-on omits any information on the right-hand side of these columns.
- Make sure your Google Doc™ template doesn't contain any Google Drawings. There is a recent bug on Google's side that prevents add-ons from creating documents from templates that contain Google Drawings. Sometimes it is difficult to locate Google Drawings on a template (e.g it could be shapes, horizontal lines, or even blank spaces which are very hard to locate). If you are unable to find them, we recommend creating the template from scratch ensuring that the content you use doesn't include any Google Drawings.
- Since the add-on gives you the option to choose which notification types to include attachments on, double check you have selected the right notification type(s).
- If you recently changed administrators, make sure to follow the steps on this FAQ so the add-on has authorization to access the files from the new administrator's account.
When files are uploaded to your Google Form, the add-on will include the link to the files on email notifications. If your requestors or recipients need access to these files, you will need to ensure sharing permissions (of the Google Drive™ folder) are set appropriately. Refer to the support article how to use file upload questions for more information.
To build email notifications, the add-on draws information from the Form Responses sheet and therefore requires the structure of the sheet to remain largely intact.
- Open the spreadsheet that is linked to your form.
- Open the Form Responses sheet (note, you may have renamed it).
- Check to ensure the column headings are positioned in Row 1.
- Check to ensure the Timestamp column is positioned in Column A.
- Check to ensure the Request # and Overall Status columns are on the right hand side of form response data. The add-on omits any information on the right-hand side of these columns.
- Check to ensure the question name in your Google Form is not blank. The add-on ignores any questions without a name. The add-on also omits any questions that were not responded to.
- If you have personalized notifications using the Email Editor, check to ensure you have not inadvertently removed the <<Form Response Table>> marker from your notifications.
- Open the spreadsheet that is linked to your form.
- Open the Form Responses sheet (note, you may have renamed it).
- Change the order of columns to match the order of your form questions, by dragging the column to the position you want.
Please note, when adjusting column order the add-on requires the Timestamp column to be in Column A, and it requires the Request # and Overall Status columns to be on the right-hand side of your form response data.
Google's way of managing the security associated with third party applications is through the authorization process. When you provide authorization to an add-on, it allows the add-on to access your Google Form, Google Sheet, etc to store and retrieve information. Think of it like sharing your files with a colleague; providing authorization to an add-on is a more secure method of allowing access your files. Rather than having to add or remove access to individual files, this method allows you to do it at the application level. When this authorization expires or is revoked, the add-on cannot access your files to process form responses or approvals, until authorization is provided again.
The form administrator can re-authorize the add-on by either:
- Clicking Re-authorize on the error message and following the Google prompts (make sure every permission is ticked on the consent screen)
- Opening your Google Form > open the add-on > click 'Authorize now'
If you are a recipient or requestor and see this message, please contact the form administrator (their email address is shown in the message). As soon as they re-authorize, the page will work again.
The add-on will require authorization:
- The first time you use the add-on
- If you change your Google account password or security settings. We recommend using an account that does not have a password reset policy enforced.
- If we make changes to the permissions required - we will notify you prior
- If a required permission (such as access to Google Sheets) was unticked on the Google consent screen when authorizing
- If you remove the application's authorization from Google's third party application permissions page
- If your Google Workspace administrator removes the application's authorization on your behalf either manually or through a specific policy they set
If you are being asked to re-authorize the add-on frequently, you may need to speak with your Google Workspace administrator to confirm what domain wide policies are in place that automatically revoke third party application's authorizations. In this case, your Google Workspace administrator will need to adjust the policies or whitelist our add-on.
Each form saves its responses and approval records to a Google Sheet. This message means the add-on can no longer find that spreadsheet. This usually happens when the spreadsheet has been deleted, or when the form has been linked to a different spreadsheet.
To resolve this, the form administrator can:
- Restore the spreadsheet from the Google Drive trash, if it was deleted. This keeps the existing requests and approval records.
- Open the add-on on the form. The add-on reconnects to the spreadsheet the form is currently linked to.
If the spreadsheet can't be restored, requests submitted before it was deleted can no longer be approved or tracked. Ask the requestors to submit the form again.
If you are a recipient or requestor and see this message, please contact the form administrator (their email address is shown in the message).
The add-on found the form's spreadsheet, but not the row for this request. This usually happens when one of the following has changed in the spreadsheet:
- The row relating to this request was deleted
- The Response Id value or column was deleted from the Detailed Approval Records sheet, or the column was moved out of column B
- The Timestamp column was moved out of column A in the Form Responses sheet
- The form was recently linked to a new spreadsheet
If a column was moved, the form administrator can move it back to its original position and try the link again. Avoid restoring an earlier version of the spreadsheet from its version history, as that also removes any approvals and updates the add-on has recorded since.
If the row or Response Id was deleted, or the form was linked to a new spreadsheet, the request can no longer be approved or tracked. Ask the requestor to submit the form again.
If you are a recipient or requestor and see this message, please contact the form administrator.
You could be receiving this error for a couple of reasons:
- If this error is being received on one form only, there would have been changes to the format or content of your spreadsheet data that is preventing the add-on from reading or writing to the spreadsheet. Make sure there hasn't been any changes to Detailed Approval Records or Form Responses sheets. If any changes have been made, undo the changes and try again.
- If this error is being received across all your forms, the add-on would be unable to access one of Google's services temporarily. In this case, please wait and retry again shortly.
If you need our assistance identifying the issue with your spreadsheet, reach out to our support team via our contact page. When contacting us, share temporary access to the Google Sheet (that is linked to your form) with support@formapprovals.com and include the URL that generates the error in the email to us, so we can help you identify the cause.