How to Export Entries from Gravity Forms to Google Sheets Automatically

With Gravity Forms, you get a quick and easy form builder without any coding. You simply need to install this WordPress plugin, create a custom form by dragging the fields you want and then add your form to your page. 

The form will collect the responses that are valuable to you. To analyze them, you should export this data from Gravity Forms to a spreadsheet app, such as Google Sheets. Usually, you have two options:

• manually download entries as a CSV file to your device 
• connect Gravity Forms to Google Sheets for automatic data exports

We’ll check out both options in this tutorial, so read on and choose the best one for you!

Manually export entries from Gravity Forms to Google Sheets 

Let’s start with the basic functionality. This won’t require any plugins or third-party solutions. All you need to do is open your WordPress Dashboard and select Forms => Import/Export.

Then select the form, which entries you want to export, as well as the fields you want to include to your export file. 

Optionally, you can filter the exported entries by a condition and a time period. To do this, add a condition logic and select a data range. Once you’re ready, click the “Download Export File” button.

After that, a CSV file with your entries will be downloaded to your device.

The next step is to import it to Google Sheets. We believe that you do not need an explanation for this. However, if you do, check out this blog post explaining how to import CSV to Google Sheets from your device.

Drawback of manual export of data from Gravity Forms

This approach is fast and simple, but its main drawback is that you have to export the file again after every new entry. It’s very inconvenient, isn’t it?

The alternative option is integrating Gravity Forms and Google Sheets, so that the export will be carried out automatically on a schedule or with every new entry received. 

How to connect Gravity Forms with Google Sheets?

Actually, you have two options here if you are a no-code evangelist.

The first option is to install a WordPress plugin that will integrate Gravity Forms and Google Sheets. As an example, you can consider Connector for Gravity Forms and Google Sheets by CRM Perks. With it, you can automate sending Gravity Forms entries to Google Sheets every time a user submits a form.

The second option is based on a third-party application. In our case, we use Coupler.io. It is a solution for exporting data from different apps (Airtable, WordPress, Slack, etc.) and sources to Google Sheets and BigQuery. It also provides a function to connect to the REST API of an app and retrieve JSON data to Google Sheets on a schedule. This is what we’re going to do with the Gravity Forms API in the next section.

Gravity Forms – Google Sheets integration via API

This API integration with Google Sheets requires two steps:

• Get the API credentials in Gravity Forms
• Integrate Gravity Forms with Google Sheets

Gravity Forms API credentials

Go to your WordPress Dashboard, and select Forms => Settings => REST API.

Click the “Add Key” button and configure the following settings:

• Description – enter the description of your API key
• User – select the WordPress user
• Permission – select “Read” since we’re going to only retrieve data from Gravity Forms

Click “Add Key” to proceed.

On the next page, you’ll see your credentials:

• Consumer key 
• Consumer secret

Copy them somewhere, since they won’t be available once you leave this page.

Now we can continue and set up our Gravity Forms to Google Sheets connection.

Integrate Gravity Forms with Google Sheets

Sign in to Coupler.io and click “Add importer“. 

Name the importer as you wish and complete three steps:

1. Set up Source
2. Set up Destination
3. Set up Schedule

Set up Source 

• Select JSON Client as the source application. Click “Continue“.
• Insert the JSON URL depending on the data you want to export. In this section you’ll discover data (and its JSON URLs) that you can send from Gravity Forms to separate Google Sheets. For example, here is the JSON URL to export all entries of all forms created in Gravity Forms:

http://{your-domain}/wp-json/gf/v2/entries

{your-domain} – replace with the domain name of your WordPress site. 

Click “Continue“.

• Insert the following headers in the “HTTP headers” field:

Authorization: Basic {API-credentials-string}
Content-type: application/json

{API-credentials-string} – is the Base64-encoded string of the following syntax: {client-key}:{client-secret} 

To obtain the Base64-encoded string, enter your string in a BASE64 encoder and click “Encode“.

For example, here is what the {API-credentials-string} may look like:

Click “Continue“.

Set up Destination

• Select Google Sheets as the destination application. Click “Continue“. 
• Connect your Google account – click “Connect” and log in to your account. Click “Continue“.
• Choose the spreadsheet, as well as the sheet to export data to. Click “Continue“.
• In the next steps you can specify the first cell to import your data range to, as well as the import mode (replace or append). Click “Continue“.

Set up Schedule

Customize the frequency for automating export of responses from Gravity Forms to Google Sheets.

When all the settings are configured, click “Save and Run“. Here is how the Gravity forms results exported to Google Sheets with Coupler.io will look:

The names of the fields – entries 2, entries 3, etc. – correspond to the field ID of your form. This is the main confusion, since different forms may have different fields with the same ID. For example, ID 2 in our Simple Contact Form refers to the email field, while in the Build A Pizza form, this ID refers to the total order. As a result, you may have some unorganized data when exporting all entries.

You can avoid this if you export responses to separate forms and you can do this quite easily!

Export Gravity Forms entries to Google Sheets form by form

The flow is the same as above but with one modification – use the following JSON URL:

http://{your-domain}/wp-json/gf/v2/forms/{form-ID}/entries

{form-ID} – insert the ID of the form which entries you want to export.

You can learn the form IDs in the Forms menu of the WP admin dashboard. 

You can set up separate importers for each form and schedule their export.

Can I change the Gravity Forms headers for Google Sheets?

We tested Gravity Forms API, but failed to return the entries with the named fields. This may seem to be a huge drawback, but hold on! You can configure Coupler.io to export values starting from A2 cell. You can do this in the respective field when setting up Destination. Then you can manually assign the names of your fields to their IDs in the first row. So, the result will look like this:

You may well have another workaround. Feel free to share it in the comments below.

Data you can send from Gravity Forms to separate Google Sheets

Here are the JSON URLs for exporting other types of data from Gravity Forms:

http://{your-domain}/wp-json/gf/v2/{endpoint}

Other sources you can export data from with Coupler.io

As you see, exporting data from Gravity Forms to Google Sheets is not as hard as it seemed at the beginning. You can automate this flow with Coupler.io and enjoy your data. Actually, it’s very similar to connecting Typeform to Google Sheets, which we blogged about recently.

Another benefit is that you can use a single tool for exporting data from multiple sources. Currently, Coupler.io supports 10+ ready-to-use integrations including WordPress to Google Sheets. Good luck with your data!