How to add submenu items to ActionBar action in code?

Yes, there is.

The addSubMenu method returns a SubMenu object. A SubMenu is also a Menu, so you can call add on it to add items to the submenu rather than the parent menu. Your code above is creating two different submenus for Form 1 and Form 2 rather than two items within a single New Form submenu.

Example:

SubMenu submenu = menu.addSubMenu(0, Menu.NONE, 1, "New Form").setIcon(R.drawable.ic_new_form);submenu.add("Form 1").setIcon(R.drawable.attachment);

Adding an ActionProvider maybe it's easier. You can try as explained here

You should consider to use an ActionProvider

example: https://gist.github.com/sibelius/7ca0b757492ff6740dec

Menu with action provider item

<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools">    <item android:id="@+id/action_companies"        android:icon="@drawable/ic_list"        android:title="@string/action_companies"        app:actionProviderClass="com.example.MyActionProvider"        app:showAsAction="always"/></menu>

Code

public class MyActionProvider extends ActionProvider {    private Context mContext;    public MyActionProvider(Context context) {        super(context);        mContext = context;    }    @Override    public View onCreateActionView() {        //LayoutInflater layoutInflater = LayoutInflater.from(mContext);        return null;    }    @Override    public void onPrepareSubMenu(SubMenu subMenu) {        super.onPrepareSubMenu(subMenu);        subMenu.clear();        subMenu.add("menu 1");        subMenu.add("menu 2");        subMenu.add("menu 3");    }    @Override    public boolean hasSubMenu() {        return true;    }    @Override    public boolean onPerformDefaultAction() {        return super.onPerformDefaultAction();    }}