Yes — and there is no setting that changes it. The moment a Google Form contains a file upload question, every respondent must sign in to a Google account before they can submit, whatever else the form's sharing settings say. Anyone without a Google account, or unwilling to make one, cannot send you a file through that form.
What the person you sent the form to actually sees
This is usually how the problem gets discovered: the form works perfectly for you, and a client replies saying it asked them to log in. They open the link and, instead of the questions, they get Google's sign-in screen — or they get the form but the upload area tells them to sign in before they can attach anything. There is no "continue as guest" path from there. For someone who does not have a Google account, or who is on a work network where Google sign-in is blocked, the form is simply a dead end, and you often find out days later when the file never arrived.
Worth being precise about the scope: it is the file upload question that does this, not the rest of the form. A form of ordinary text and multiple-choice questions can be answered by anyone with the link, signed in or not. Add a single upload question and the sign-in requirement applies to the whole form, including the questions that did not need it.
Why Google requires it
The requirement is deliberate rather than an oversight, and understanding it explains why no toggle exists. A file uploaded through a form is not stored by Forms — it is written into the form owner's Google Drive, consuming the owner's storage quota. That makes every submission a write into somebody's real Drive account by somebody else, which is exactly the shape of thing that attracts abuse: spam, malware, and storage exhaustion by whoever finds the link. Requiring a signed-in account attaches an identity to each upload, gives Google something to rate-limit and scan against, and means a file that turns out to be malicious can be traced. An anonymous version of the same feature would be a public write endpoint into a stranger's Drive.
Which is a coherent position for Google to take, and also the reason a form is the wrong instrument for collecting files from people outside your organisation. The requirement is not going to be relaxed, so the practical question is what to send those people instead.
The settings people try that don't help
Every one of these gets suggested in forums, and none of them removes the sign-in requirement — because none of them addresses the upload question itself:
- Turning off "Restrict to users in your organisation." This governs who may open the form, not whether an upload needs an account. Off, the form is public; the upload still is not.
- Setting "Collect email addresses" to "Do not collect." This stops Forms recording the respondent's address in the response, which is a different thing from letting them stay anonymous while uploading.
- Turning off "Limit to 1 response." That setting requires sign-in on its own, so switching it off removes one sign-in requirement while leaving the upload question's requirement untouched.
- Publishing the form, or shortening the URL. Neither changes what the form asks of the person answering it.
- Rebuilding the form from scratch. The requirement is a property of the question type, so a fresh form with an upload question behaves identically.
If instead the file upload option is greyed out and you cannot add the question at all, that is a different problem with different causes — it is covered in why Google Forms file upload is greyed out.
Who this rules the form out for
- Clients, vendors, and applicants outside your organisation, most of whom have no reason to hold a Google account and no interest in creating one to send you a PDF.
- Anyone on a corporate network or managed device where Google sign-in is blocked by policy — they cannot comply even if willing.
- Public or semi-public collection: submissions, entries, tip-offs, anything where the point is a low barrier.
- Anyone answering on a phone who is signed into a personal Google account but sending on behalf of a work one, which is where files quietly land in the wrong place.
The three ways around it
There is no fourth. Each trades a different thing away, so the right one depends on whether you need a form or just the files.
- 01Keep the form, drop the upload question, and add Apps Script that writes files into Drive itself. The script runs as you, so the respondent never needs an account. You now own a script: OAuth consent on your account, execution quotas that throttle quietly under load, and breakage whenever Google changes the API underneath it.
- 02Move to a third-party form builder with its own file storage. Respondents upload without an account, but files land in that vendor's storage rather than your Drive, so anything you actually work on has to be pulled across afterwards.
- 03Send a dedicated upload link instead of a form. You sign in once as the owner; senders get a single upload page with no account, and files are written straight into a folder in your own Drive.
If the form only existed to collect files
This is the common case, and it is the one where the form was never earning its keep. If the questions on it are "your name" and "upload the file," a form is a heavier instrument than the job needs — and the one thing it adds over a plain upload link is the sign-in wall you are trying to remove.
Drive File Request is the third option above. It authenticates with Google's narrow drive.file OAuth scope, which only ever grants access to files and folders the app itself creates — nothing else in your Drive is readable by it — creates a dedicated folder per link, and gives every sender a single upload page with no account, no install, and no sight of anyone else's submissions. You can still ask for a name, an email, notes, or a document type as fields on that page, so "I need context with the file" is not a reason to keep the form. The setup, and the two Drive-native workarounds it replaces, are walked through in how to create a file request link for Google Drive.
Comparing the options honestly
| Google Form + upload question | Form + Apps Script | Dedicated upload link | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sender needs a Google account | Yes, always | No | No |
| Setup time | ~2 minutes | 15–30+ minutes, then maintenance | ~1 minute |
| Files land in your Drive | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Per-link size and count limits | Per form, not per sender | Whatever you code | Built in |
| Expiry date | Manual — close responses | Whatever you code | Built in |
| Breaks when Google changes an API | No | Yes | No |
What to do about the form you already sent out
If a form is already circulating and people are stuck at the sign-in screen, do not edit the upload question out from under them — responses already submitted stay, but you will confuse everyone mid-flight. Send a short follow-up with an upload link instead, and switch "Accepting responses" off on the form once the last person who could use it has. Chasing people who bounced off a sign-in screen is the expensive part; the longer version of why that friction costs you files at all is in how to collect files from clients without making them sign up.