# Free Bubble Sheet Generator: printable answer sheet | Papeez > Make a printable bubble sheet: 10 to 200 questions, 2 to 6 answers, name and ID block, free PDF. No sign-up, everything runs in your browser. Source: https://papeez.com/en/tools/bubble-sheet-generator/ FR version: https://papeez.com/fr/outils/generateur-feuille-reponses-qcm/ ES version: https://papeez.com/es/herramientas/generador-hojas-de-respuestas/ ES-ES version: https://papeez.com/es-es/herramientas/generador-hojas-de-respuestas/ PT-BR version: https://papeez.com/pt-br/ferramentas/gerador-cartao-resposta/ --- ## Bubble sheet generator 10 to 200 questions, 2 to 6 answers each, a name and ID block, and a print-ready PDF. ## Bubble sheet generator: printable answer sheets Pick the number of questions and the number of answers: the grid draws itself, prints, and downloads as a PDF. Free, no sign-up. Everything is worked out in your browser. Neither your test title, nor the number of questions, nor the PDF it produces is sent to a server. ## How to make an answer sheet ### Set the number of questions From 10 to 200. The grid reflows as you type, moving from one column to two and then to three so that it stays readable, and it never shrinks the bubbles to gain a line. ### Choose how many answers each question has Two to six, lettered A through F. A four-answer test and a five-answer test do not give the same sheet, and that choice is what decides how wide a column is. ### Print it, or download the PDF Print sends the sheet alone, without the rest of this page. The PDF is assembled in your browser at the exact size of the paper you chose, ready to be copied once per student. ## A worked example: a 25-question quiz for a class of 30 Twenty-five questions with five answers each fit one column on a single Letter sheet, with the name and ID block at the top and the class and date line under it. Download the PDF once, run thirty copies, and every student gets the same grid. The questions themselves stay on their own pages: keeping the two apart is what lets you reprint only the grid when a student ruins a row. | Setting | Value | What it does to the sheet | | --- | --- | --- | | Questions | 25 | One column of 25 rows, one sheet | | Answers per question | 5 (A to E) | A column 117.5 pt wide | | Name and ID block | On | 40 pt taken off the top of the sheet | | Class and date line | On | 28 pt more, so the grid starts lower | | Paper | Letter | 35 rows per column available at most | Heights are in PostScript points, the unit the PDF is written in: 72 points make an inch. ### What is a bubble sheet? A [bubble sheet](https://papeez.com/en/glossary/#bubble-sheet) is a grid on which a candidate fills in one bubble per question instead of writing the answer out. The questions stay on their own pages; the grid carries nothing but numbers and letters. That separation is what makes marking mechanical: a marker, or a machine, only has to see which bubble is filled, and never has to read handwriting. It is also what makes the sheet reusable. The same fifty-question grid serves every fifty-question test of the year, whatever the subject. One layout to approve, one print run to order, and the questions can change up to the night before. You will also see it called an answer sheet, a test answer sheet, an exam answer sheet or a scan sheet. This generator makes the grid, not the test: the questions stay yours, in the word processor you wrote them in. ### How to print a bubble sheet: paper, margins, scaling Three settings decide whether a printed sheet can still be read by a scanner, and only one of them is routinely wrong. In the print dialog, set the scale to 100 percent rather than to Fit to page. That setting, on by default in a great many drivers, shrinks the sheet by a few percent and moves the corner marks with it. The second is the paper. The sheet is produced at the size chosen in the options, Letter or A4, and the printer tray has to hold the same. Printing a Letter sheet on A4 works, but the sheet is repositioned and the margins are no longer the ones it was laid out with. The third is colour, and the answer is that you do not need any. The sheet has no colour fills at all, only black rules and light grey letters inside the bubbles, so black and white is both sufficient and cheaper. Use plain white paper, 20 lb or 24 lb, and avoid heavily recycled stock: the contrast between an empty bubble and a pencil mark is what gets read later. | Print setting | Set it to | Why | | --- | --- | --- | | Scale | 100 % | Automatic fitting moves the corner marks | | Paper size | The one chosen in the options | Repositioning changes the sheet's margins | | Colour | Black and white | The sheet has no colour fills | | Sides | Single-sided | A double-sided sheet has to be scanned twice | | Quality | Normal | Draft mode blurs the outline of the bubbles | ### How many questions fit on one sheet? It depends on two things: the number of answers per question, which sets how wide a column is, and the height of the header block, which sets where the grid starts. The generator picks the smallest number of columns that fits the height available, then shares the questions between them. In practice that means twenty questions give you one column, not four stubs side by side. What it never does is shrink the bubbles to gain a row. A smaller bubble is a bubble a scanner stops recognising, and the problem shows up six weeks later, silently. Past the point where one sheet is not enough, the grid runs onto a second page and says so. | Questions | 4 answers (A to D) | 5 answers (A to E) | 6 answers (A to F) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 20 | 1 sheet | 1 sheet | 1 sheet | | 50 | 1 sheet | 1 sheet | 1 sheet | | 100 | 1 sheet | 1 sheet | 1 sheet | | 150 | 1 sheet | 2 sheets | 2 sheets | | 200 | 2 sheets | 2 sheets | 2 sheets | On Letter, with the full header on (name, ID, class, date). With no header at all, one sheet holds up to 156 five-answer questions. ### Scantron compatibility: what is, and what is not A sheet made here is not a [Scantron](https://papeez.com/en/glossary/#scantron) form and cannot stand in for one. Scantron forms are proprietary pre-printed stock, bought by the box, on a paper and with a mark geometry the brand's readers expect. A Scantron reader will not read this sheet, and it should not be asked to: it was not made for it. What is true is that this sheet does the same job without the form to buy. It prints on plain white paper from any printer, and it is read back afterwards with a scanner or an office copier, with no dedicated reader in the loop. That is the difference between a consumable and a file. We claim no compatibility with any other vendor's form, and Papeez reads no proprietary form. What Papeez reads is the sheets it laid out itself, and the ones made here, whose geometry it knows. ### How to grade the filled sheets Once the papers are collected, they still have to be read. By hand, with a punched answer key laid over each grid, a pile of thirty takes a good hour; the hard part is not reading a sheet, it is reading it thirty times without slipping a row. The four black squares printed in the corners of every sheet are there for the other route. They tell a scanner how the page went through it: how far it drifted, how far it rotated, how much the copier rescaled it. Without them a scanned sheet is a photograph of bubbles and the rest is guesswork; with them the same sheet is an input file. That is what Papeez does with them: you scan the pile on the copier down the hall or with a phone, it reads the filled bubbles, applies your marking scheme and returns the grades and the per-question statistics. The [anonymity barcode](https://papeez.com/en/glossary/#anonymity-barcode), whose area you can reserve here with a checkbox, is used at that moment: it ties an anonymous paper back to its candidate without anyone writing a name. ## How the layout is worked out Nothing in the grid is arbitrary: the size of a bubble, the pitch between two bubbles and the height of a row are fixed, and it is the number of columns that gives way. The measurements are in PostScript points, the PDF's own unit, where 72 points make an inch and one point is about 0.35 mm. ``` column width = 22 + answers × 15.5 + 18 pt rows that fit = (usable height) ÷ 17 pt columns = ceil(questions ÷ rows that fit) rows / column = ceil(questions ÷ columns) Example: 100 questions, 5 answers, Letter, header with name, ID, class, date and a barcode area column width = 22 + 5 × 15.5 + 18 = 117.5 pt usable height = 792 - 34 - 178 - 16 = 564 pt rows that fit = 33 · columns = ceil(100 ÷ 33) = 4 rows / column = ceil(100 ÷ 4) = 25, on a single sheet ``` ## The grid is ready. What about the marking? Scan the completed papers: Papeez reads the bubbles, applies your marking scheme and returns the grades and the per-question statistics. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I make a printable bubble sheet? Set the number of questions and the number of answers per question in the generator at the top of this page. The grid draws itself straight away. You can add a title, a name and ID block and a class and date line, then print the sheet or download the PDF. No account is asked for and nothing is sent to a server. ### How many questions fit on one answer sheet? With five answers per question and the full header, one hundred questions fit a single Letter sheet in three columns. With no header at all, one sheet holds up to one hundred and fifty-six. Past that the grid runs onto a second page rather than shrinking the bubbles, which a scanner would stop recognising. ### Is this bubble sheet Scantron compatible? No, and it should not be fed to a Scantron reader. Scantron forms are proprietary pre-printed stock, on a paper and with a mark geometry the brand's readers expect. This sheet prints on plain white paper and is read back with an ordinary scanner or office copier, with no dedicated reader. Papeez reads no other vendor's form. ### What are the four black squares in the corners for? They are alignment marks. They tell a scanner how the page went through it: how far it drifted, how far it rotated, how much the copier rescaled it. Without them a scanned sheet is a photograph of bubbles that has to be interpreted; with them the same sheet is an input file that can be read. ### How do I print the answer sheet at the right size? In the print dialog, set the scale to 100 percent rather than Fit to page: automatic fitting shrinks the sheet by a few percent and moves the corner marks with it. Check too that the printer tray holds the size chosen in the options, Letter or A4. ### Does the generator store what I type? No. Everything is worked out in your browser: the test title, the number of questions and the PDF it produces are sent to no server. Your last settings are kept in local storage, in your own browser, so the page reopens as you left it. The title is not kept. ### Can I make an answer sheet for 50 questions? Yes. The "50 questions" button sets the generator in one click, or type any number between 10 and 200. Fifty questions with five answers fit one Letter sheet in two columns. The other ready-made templates are under the preview. ### How do I grade the sheets once they are filled in? By hand, with a punched answer key laid over each grid. Or by scanning them: that is what the alignment marks in the corners are for. Papeez then reads the filled bubbles from a scanner, an office copier or a phone, applies your marking scheme and returns the grades and the per-question statistics.