Google Form to Excel: two ways to get answers into Excel

AI Form API does not write .xlsx files yet. It gives me a CSV. Excel opens a CSV. Answers in a Google Form? I download the linked Sheet as Excel.

Route 1: my form is on AI Form API

Step 1. Get the CSV. Use the CSV button on the form page, or call the API:

export AIFORMAPI_KEY="afk_your_key_here"

curl -sS "https://aiformapi.com/v1/forms/FORM_ID/responses?format=csv" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AIFORMAPI_KEY" \
  -o responses.csv

More examples: form to CSV.

Step 2. Open it in Excel.

1. Choose File, Open. Pick Text Files as the file type.
2. Or go to Data, From Text/CSV. Pick a comma delimiter. Select Load.

Leading zeros. Excel applies its default format to each column. To keep zeros in phone numbers, use the Text Import Wizard. Rename .csv to .txt before you open it to force the wizard. Our CSV puts an apostrophe before cells that start with =, +, - or @, so they stay text.

Route 2: my form is in Google Forms

1. Link the form to a Sheet. In Google Forms, open Responses, then Summary. Use the More menu to pick a sheet. New answers then arrive there.
2. Open the sheet.
3. Download it as Excel. Choose File, Download, Excel. Your menu label may differ.
4. Open the file in Excel.

Each download is a snapshot.

Moving over

Download your old answers first. Keep the file. We cannot import old responses. Then rebuild the form. See the Google Forms alternative.

New rows without clicking

A native .xlsx export is on the roadmap, with no date. For new rows, write your own script that calls the responses endpoint with since. Or add a webhook.

New here? Start with the quickstart. See the responses guide and agent-fillable forms.

Sources, read 2026-10-30: Microsoft, Google: where responses go, Google: Excel and Sheets.