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How to make fill-in-the-blank questions in an online form

By Matthew Guay · February 15, 2021
fill-in-the-blank-form primary img

It came to me one lazy Saturday morning as I was reading, as good ideas often do. I wonder if you can make a fill-in-the-blank question in an online form?

Online form builders pride themselves on including dozens of question types—but in reality, fill-in-the-blank questions aren't that commonly supported. Most forms show questions one after another, with a title followed by a text box or dropdown for respondents to enter their answers.

I wanted a form where you could ask "How do you __ in [App]?", where you could fill in the blank space with text and pick an app from a dropdown list. The best you could do in most form apps—say, in Google Forms for instance—is to split the question into two sections. 

Fill in the blank question on Google Forms

I instead wanted something more like this—which is possible and a lot easier than at first glance.

fill in the blank question in JotForm

Here's how I built my form in JotForm—along with a handful of other apps that also fit the bill.

Add elements to your form

Just open JotForm, and make a free account if you don't already have one. That'll let you get up to 100 responses on your form each month for free—perfect for starting out.

From the left sidebar, select the Fill in the blank option. You can then use the formatting tools to customize your question, add an image, modify page alignment, or change the font size and type. 

Add fill in the blank feature in JotForm

To create the dropdown menu, click on add field and scroll down to find Dropdown. From there, you can easily customize the options you want to prefill. 

Additionally, short words, phrases, and terms can be used to complete questions, but you can also get more specific by adding in a number of form elements into the Fill in the Blank field. 

For example, you might want to ask for a respondent's personal details, like name, address, or phone number. Or, you might want to request someone's signature, which will look like this:

Adding a signature request in your form

On one question, for example, I wanted to let my respondents have the option to select an answer from different options, so I added in the multiple choice option: 

Adding in multiple choice in JotForm

But you can also let respondents select from a single choice selection, add in numbers, dates, or fill out blank text boxes with whole paragraphs. 

The opportunities are endless, so get creative!

How to use your fill-in-the-blank responses

Now it's time to put your form results to work. Fortunately, whenever one of your forms is filled out, you'll get an email alert. You can decide whether you want all of the text inside the email, or just the answers your respondent provided. That way, you can take action right away—without logging into your JotForm account. 

And, by using JotForm in tandem with Zapier, you can really make the most of your form results. For example, you can save your form responses automatically to a spreadsheet, get notified about them in Slack, and even send your respondents' info straight to your CRM. 

Save new JotForm responses as Google Sheets rows

  • Jotform logo
  • Google Sheets logo
Jotform + Google Sheets
More details
    With this integration, you can have your JotForm submissions automatically added to Google Sheets so it's easier to share results with colleagues. After you set this up, every time there is a new JotForm response, a new row will be automatically added to a Google Sheets spreadsheet you specify.

    Get Slack notifications for new Jotform form submissions

    • Jotform logo
    • Slack logo
    Jotform + Slack
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      Getting notified of new Jotform form submissions in Slack helps you keep track of responses in near real time. Once you set up this Jotform-Slack integration, you'll get a Slack message for every Jotform submission from that point forward. You can choose to have your Jotform submissions sent to you via @slackbot, or you can designate a specific channel for them.

      Add ActiveCampaign contacts from new Jotform submissions

      • Jotform logo
      • ActiveCampaign logo
      Jotform + ActiveCampaign
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        Eliminate the manual process of adding contacts individually or importing them into your ActiveCampaign account. This Jotform ActiveCampaign allows you to take contact information from new Jotform submissions and automatically add them as contacts in ActiveCampaign.

        You can even create tasks in your favorite project management apps every time you get a JotForm response, sync JotForm submissions with your calendar so you don't miss important events, or add respondents to Mailchimp as subscribers.  

        Add new Jotform submissions to Asana as tasks

        • Jotform logo
        • Asana logo
        Jotform + Asana
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          Need a public form to allow people to submit tasks to you? This Jotform Asana integration has you covered. When a new Jotform is submitted, this integration creates a task in Asana.

          Create Google Calendar event from new Jotform submission

          • Jotform logo
          • Google Calendar logo
          Jotform + Google Calendar
          More details
            Jotform can capture dates and times that you want to add to a schedule in Google Calendar, but importing them those into your calendar can be time consuming. With this integration, Zapier can automatically create a Google Calendar event whenever there is a new form submission. You'll never have to manually make appointments in your calendar again.

            Add new Jotform submissions to a Mailchimp list

            • Jotform logo
            • Mailchimp logo
            Jotform + Mailchimp
            More details
              Rather than waiting for a one-time import of submissions into Mailchimp, use Zapier to start automatically adding new submissions to your list. Once you set up this Jotform-Mailchimp integration, new submissions from that point forward are individually added as subscribers.

              With JotForm's Zapier integration, you can automate common workflows to save you time and make you more productive. 

              Make a fill-in-the-blank question in your favorite form app

              While JotForm may be the quickest—and easiest—route to make fill-in-the-blank-questions, it's not the only one. All you need to make one is choose a form that supports multiple columns—and ideally that lets you remove the question text from above the text and dropdown options.

              Here are some options that fit the bill, at least in part:

              • PlanSo Forms may be the next best option. Use its Paragraph element to add text, and just drag-and-drop the sections near each other to instantly turn them into a multi-column sentence.

              • Outgrow is another great option, as it has a built-in template for fill-in-the-blank questions. Just select The Greek Quizzes template, and you can create a form that will decide something for your user. Have them fill in the blanks, then you can recommend a product or service.

              • 123 Form Builder also lets you drag form fields side-by-side, though you're capped at four fields in one row—so you couldn't include the question mark in our form.

              • Wufoo includes CSS Keywords, which you can use to arrange up to three form fields in a row for a simple fill-in-the-blank question.

              • Gravity Forms, a form plugin for WordPress-powered sites, uses similar CSS Ready Classes to let you add up to five columns—which you could use to create a form like the one above.

              • Formstack does include multiple columns, but text and dropdown fields are required to include a header—which would require some strategic writing to make your fill-in-the-blank question look correct.

              • FormKeep makes it simpler to code HTML forms and manage the data—and with custom CSS, you could make a single-line form.

              • Aerobatic, a static site host, also makes it easy to do the same with custom webhook-powered forms on Jekyll or other flat-file CMS-based sites.


              Header photo by Markus Spiske via Pexels

              This article was originally published in March 2017 and was updated in February 2021 with contributions by Elena Alston.

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