GC Forms holds and stores form information submitted by people who fill out forms only temporarily. Departments and agencies have ultimate custody and control of their forms’ data. As such, when the form response delivery option is set to “Download responses from GC Forms” (required for Protected B data), responses must be retrieved from GC Forms within 45 days of receiving a submission.
To download form responses:
- Sign in to GC Forms.
- In Forms, go to the form for which you want to get responses.
- Select “Responses page”.
- If responses have been submitted, they will appear in the “New” tab.
- You should download responses within 15 days.
- Select all responses and “Download selected”.
- You can download up to 150 responses at a time. Your browser may initially block the attempt to download multiple files — this can be changed in your browser’s settings.
- Choose the format of responses (HTML, CSV, or JSON)
- If you’re looking for a spreadsheet with multiple responses, CSV is likely the option you’re looking for.
- Choose where responses should be saved on your computer.
- Consider where responses should be saved based on your department or agency’s information management policies and processes.
- Responses will be moved to the “Downloaded” tab.
- Next, you will have 15 more days to sign off on the removal of responses.
To sign off on the removal of form responses:
We ask that you confirm having downloaded responses and approve them for removal from GC Forms. Having responses in GC Forms for more than 30 days may lead to account restrictions.
- Open the responses and ensure the content reflects a genuine form response.
- Open the receipt file (receipt-recu.html) that was also downloaded.
- Select the “Copy all receipt codes” button in the receipt file.
- Go to the “Downloaded” tab.
- Select the “Sign off on removal with receipt codes” button.
- You can sign off on up to 150 responses at a time.
- Paste receipt codes to verify that responses were downloaded successfully.
- Submit receipt codes. Responses will be moved to the “Signed off for removal” tab.
- If you encounter a problem with a specific response, select “Report a problem”.
