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Import Questions into Google Forms Quiz from a CSV, Spreadsheet or Any Video

Get a full question set into a Google Forms quiz without pasting them one at a time.

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What VidQuiz reads: paste a YouTube link and VidQuiz watches the video itself. For any other source (Vimeo, an MP4, a screen recording, an upload) paste that video’s transcript and VidQuiz writes the questions from it.

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The short answer

Last updated August 2026

Google Forms does have an Import questions button, but it imports from one place only: another Google Form you can open. There is no native CSV, Excel, Word or PDF question importer. Every bulk route therefore runs through something else, either a Google Workspace Marketplace add-on that reads a Google Sheet or an Apps Script that builds the form with FormApp. VidQuiz starts a step earlier: paste the link to a lecture, training video or webinar, and it writes the questions, the answer key, the point values and the explanations, then exports a Google Forms ready CSV for whichever of those routes you use.

Almost every guide to this question gets the first fact wrong, and the mistake costs people an hour. Google Forms has a button labelled Import questions. It sits in the floating toolbar on the right of the editor, next to Add question. It looks exactly like the thing you want. It is not. It imports questions from another Google Form in your Drive, and nothing else.

So when someone types import questions into google forms from csv into a search box, they are looking for a feature that does not exist. What does exist is a set of workarounds that genuinely do the job, and knowing which one fits your situation is most of the battle. Some are a two minute add-on install. One is fifteen lines of Apps Script. One is not an import at all and is faster than any of them.

The other half of the problem is rarely mentioned: producing the questions in the first place. An import route is only useful once you have thirty good multiple choice items with a correct answer marked. VidQuiz works from the video or audio your quiz is meant to test (watching it directly when it is a YouTube link, or from the transcript you paste for anything else), and writes the questions with the answer key, point values, an explanation on every item and a timestamp back to the source, and gives you a Google Forms ready CSV to push through whichever route below suits you.

At a glance

Every route into a Google Forms quiz and what it accepts

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Route	What Google Forms accepts	Where the questions land
Add question, then Import questions	Another Google Form in your Drive	The form you are editing, questions you tick
Marketplace add-on that reads a sheet	A Google Sheet, so a CSV imported into Sheets first	A new form, or an existing one the add-on opens
Apps Script using FormApp	Anything the script can read: a Sheet, a CSV in Drive, an API	Whatever the script builds, including the answer key
Make a copy of a form, then edit	A Google Form	A duplicate you rewrite question by question
A CSV or Excel file uploaded directly	Not supported, there is no file importer	Nowhere, until Sheets or a script sits in the middle
A Word document or PDF of questions	Not supported	Nowhere. Microsoft Forms converts these, Google Forms does not
Typing into the question editor	Not an import	One question at a time, by hand

The second to last row is the one that catches people out, because the comparable Microsoft product behaves differently. Microsoft Forms has Quick Import, which converts a Word or PDF quiz into real questions. Google Forms has no equivalent, so any article promising a Word or PDF import for Google Forms is describing a third party converter, not a Google feature.

Can I import questions into Google Forms?

Yes, but only from another Google Form. Open the form, click Import questions in the toolbar on the right, pick the source form from your Drive, then tick the questions you want and add them. Google Forms has no importer for CSV, Excel, Word or PDF files, so every other bulk route goes through a Marketplace add-on or Apps Script.

That limitation is not an oversight so much as a design choice. Google Forms was built as a form editor rather than an assessment authoring tool, and the question model it uses does not map cleanly onto a flat file. A checkbox grid, a linear scale and a file upload question do not share a shape, so there is no obvious set of columns that would cover them all.

The practical consequence is that everyone doing this at any volume ends up in Google Sheets. A sheet is the format both the add-on route and the script route agree on, which is why a Forms ready CSV is the useful thing to have in your hands rather than a Word document.

How to import questions into Google Forms from another form

Open the destination form in the editor. In the floating toolbar to the right of the questions, click the Import questions icon, which sits under Add question. A panel opens listing the forms in your Drive. Choose the source form, and Google shows you its questions with a checkbox against each one.

Tick the questions you want, or use Select all, then click Import questions at the bottom of the panel. They arrive at the end of the current form, keeping their type and their options. In a quiz, the point value and the answer key come across with them, which is the part that saves the real time.

This is genuinely the fastest route when a suitable source form already exists, and it is worth building deliberately. Some departments keep one form per unit as a question library, import from it into the graded quiz each term, and never rebuild a question twice. Nothing about that requires an add-on.

How to import questions into Google Forms from a CSV or spreadsheet

Get the questions into Google Sheets first. If you have a CSV, open Sheets, use File, Import, upload the file and let it create a new spreadsheet. One row per question, with the stem in one column, each option in its own column, and a column naming the correct answer.

Then install an add-on that reads that sheet. Open the form, click the three dot menu, choose Get add-ons, and search the Google Workspace Marketplace for a form builder that lists importing from Sheets among its features. Grant it access to your Drive, point it at the sheet, map the columns to question fields when it asks, and let it build the questions.

Two things are worth checking before you trust the result on a graded quiz. First, whether the add-on writes the answer key or only the questions, because several handle the stems and options and stop there, leaving you to open every question and mark the correct option. Second, what happens to rows with fewer options than the header allows, since a three option question in a four column sheet sometimes arrives with a blank fourth choice.

Import questions into Google Forms from Word or a PDF

There is no route that does this inside Google Forms. Uploading a .docx or a .pdf is not something the editor offers at any point, and the Import questions panel only ever lists Google Forms.

If your questions live in a Word file, the honest path is to move them into a spreadsheet first, one question per row, and then use the Sheets route above. For a handful of questions that is slower than retyping. For sixty it is worth the twenty minutes, because the sheet stays useful for the next form too.

Worth being plain about our own limits here, since it saves the wrong people a signup. VidQuiz does not read Word documents, PDFs or spreadsheets of questions you already wrote. It reads video and audio and writes new questions from them. If what you have is a document full of finished questions, a spreadsheet plus an add-on is your route, and no tool of ours changes that.

How to bulk upload questions to Google Forms with Apps Script

Apps Script is the route with no add-on permissions and no column mapping screen, and it is less work than it sounds. From the form, open the three dot menu, choose Apps Script, and you get an editor bound to that form. The FormApp service creates questions directly: addMultipleChoiceItem for the stem, setChoices with the options, setPoints for the value and setFeedbackForIncorrect for an explanation.

A script reading a Sheet is roughly fifteen lines. Read the rows with SpreadsheetApp, loop over them, and for each row create the item, build the choice list with the correct option flagged, and set points and feedback. Run it once and the form fills. Run it again against a different sheet and you have a second quiz in a few seconds.

The reason this route is worth the small effort is that it is the only one that reliably sets the answer key, the points and the per question feedback in a single pass. Add-ons vary on that. A script does exactly what you tell it, every time, and you can keep it for next term.

Does the answer key come across when you import?

It depends entirely on the route. Importing from another Google Form carries the answer key and the point value with each question, because both forms use the same internal model. Everything else is uncertain: some Marketplace add-ons set the key from a designated column, some create the questions and leave the quiz ungraded, and a script sets whatever you write into it.

This is the single most common disappointment with a bulk import, so it is worth testing on three questions before you run sixty. Import a small batch, switch the form to quiz mode under Settings if it is not already, open a question and look at whether Answer key at the bottom left already shows the correct option marked and points assigned. If it does not, the route you picked is not carrying the key and you will be marking every question by hand.

The VidQuiz export includes a Correct Answer column, a Points column and a Feedback column for exactly this reason. Whether they get used depends on the route, but the data is there rather than missing.

What VidQuiz exports for Google Forms

The Google Forms export is a CSV with one row per question and these columns: Question, Option 1, Option 2, Option 3, Option 4, Correct Answer, Points and Feedback. That column set is deliberate. It is the shape the Sheets based add-ons ask for and the shape a short Apps Script loop reads without any transformation.

The questions come from your source material rather than a template. Paste the link to a lecture capture, a course video, a recorded webinar, a training session or a podcast episode, and VidQuiz writes multiple choice questions with the correct answer marked, a one line explanation on every item and a timestamp back to the moment in the video the question came from. You edit anything that does not fit before you export, and nothing is generated that you have not seen.

There is no accuracy guarantee and there should not be one. Treat the output as a strong first draft written by something that watched the whole video carefully, then apply your own judgement about what actually matters on the assessment. That review is the part worth your time, and it takes minutes rather than the afternoon writing thirty questions from scratch takes.

Limits worth knowing before you import a large question set

A single Google Form holds up to 300 pieces of content, and that count includes descriptions, images and videos alongside the questions themselves, so a form heavy with section text reaches the cap sooner than the number suggests. Sections are capped at 75. Neither limit bites on a normal quiz, but a question bank stuffed into one form can hit them.

Answer keys are only available on the question types that can be graded automatically: short answer, multiple choice, checkboxes, dropdown, multiple choice grid and checkbox grid. Points and feedback can be set on any type, but a paragraph question will never auto grade, so a bulk import that includes long answer items will always leave manual marking behind.

If you are importing several hundred questions and want randomization per student, Google Forms is the wrong destination and it is better to know that early. It has no native question pool that draws ten items at random from forty. That behaviour lives in a real LMS, which is why the same question set is often better exported as QTI for Canvas or as GIFT for Moodle instead.

Google Forms quiz maker writes the questions from a video and hands you the Forms ready export the routes above need.
import questions into Google Forms from a CSV is the longer step by step walkthrough of the spreadsheet route.
quiz converter covers the same job for Canvas, Brightspace, D2L, Moodle and Blackboard, with the file each one accepts.
import questions into Canvas is the equivalent page for the LMS route, where a QTI package replaces the CSV.
Microsoft Forms quiz generator is the place to start if Quick Import from Word or PDF is what you actually needed.
LMS quiz generator is the pillar comparison of which platform reads which format.

Why VidQuiz

What you get with import questions into google forms

The questions get written for you

Every import guide assumes you already have the question set. This starts before that and writes stems, options, the answer key and an explanation from your video.

A Forms ready CSV, not a generic one

The export columns line up with what the add-on and Apps Script routes expect: Question, Option 1 to 4, Correct Answer, Points, Feedback.

Quiz mode fields included

Points and answer feedback are part of the export, so the graded quiz arrives graded rather than needing a second pass through every question.

What you can do

Everything import questions into google forms gives you

Paste a YouTube link and VidQuiz reads the video itself; for anything else, upload it with its transcript. Either way it writes the questions and you edit anything before you share. You stay in control of the final quiz.

Fill a Google Forms quiz without pasting thirty questions by hand
Turn a recorded lecture or training session into a graded Google Form
Bulk load a question set from a spreadsheet you already keep
Reuse questions across several forms without rebuilding them
Ship a quiz with point values and per question feedback already set
Keep a timestamp on every question back to the moment in the video

Quiz Studio

Try it on a video right here

Pick a sample or paste your own link, generate the quiz, then answer the questions. Each one is tied to a moment in the video, with the answer and a short explanation.

Sample quiz

Real output, not generated live

Good questions

Questions about import questions into google forms

Not directly. Google Forms has no file importer of any kind. The working route is to bring the CSV into Google Sheets with File, Import, then use a Workspace Marketplace add-on or an Apps Script that reads the sheet and creates the questions.

In the floating toolbar to the right of the questions in the form editor, below Add question. It opens a panel listing the Google Forms in your Drive, and it imports from those forms only, not from files.

From another Google Form, yes, both come across. From an add-on or a script it depends on the tool and how you configured it, so test on a few questions before running a full set and check that Answer key already shows the correct option marked.

No. Microsoft Forms has Quick Import for exactly that, converting a Word or PDF quiz into questions, but Google Forms has no equivalent. Move the questions into a spreadsheet first and use the Sheets route.

No. VidQuiz reads video and audio and writes new questions from them, then exports a Google Forms ready CSV. If you already have finished questions in a document, a spreadsheet plus an add-on is the route, and this is not the tool for it.

No. Once the questions are in Google Forms it is an ordinary Google Form, delivered and graded by Google. Learners never touch VidQuiz and are not counted against your plan.

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