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Microsoft Forms Blog
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Animate Live Themes in Microsoft Forms

Skylar_Pan's avatar
Skylar_Pan
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Oct 28, 2022

Have you ever wished you could make the survey more inviting and engaging? Have you ever thought there is a collection of nicely rendered edgy backgrounds to solve this in one click? Microsoft Forms is on this! We are excited to share that animative live theme is now 100% LIVE both for commercial and consumer users!

 

What is Live theme?

Live theme is a type of animative background which could auto-replay on its own like endless loop. In survey or quiz scenario, these animative live themes will create a different feeling of engagement, connections and inclusiveness between survey senders and its audience.

 

How will it work?

IF you are opening Microsoft Forms looking for any inspirations, check out our latest theme collections. A series of featured live themes were prepopulated for you together with other static backgrounds, feel free to pick any of them, without zero worries about copyright or quality.

 

What’s more? IF creating for a specific working scenario such as Education, Event organization or Engagement related surveys, you will also see a set of predefined live theme automatically recommended based on relevancy and hopefully save your time searching and navigating.  

  

 

Will this be supported in mobile devices?

Yes, we are rolling out the mobile experiences in coming weeks. Wish you could explore it when they become available to you.

 

             

 

Does this work on quiz, or only in forms?

Live theme works for both quiz and forms.

 

Can I insert my own live themes?

No, for better quality and rendering performance only Microsoft Forms featured live themes are supported at current stage. For further extensibility and diversity, we will introduce more high quality live themes in coming future.

 

Next Steps

We hope you explore these latest updates as they become available to you. For additional details. If you have additional questions on Forms surveys, quizzes, or polls, please visit our Support page.  To send your feedback, go to the upper right corner of your form design page and select the three dots ... > Feedback. You can also join discussions in the Microsoft Forms Tech Community and follow the Forms Blog to stay updated in the future. Thank you.

Updated Oct 28, 2022
Version 1.0
  • m36five's avatar
    m36five
    Steel Contributor
    Nov 11, 2022

    I love how the Forms Product Group is constantly improving the product. This week, I had a user who needed to add an image as a choice in a form question, but that isn't available. Then, you add a new feature, 102407, TODAY that sounds like it's exactly what we're looking for. Nice!

    I was really excited about the Live Themes and I tried one but then I had to switch away because I was actually starting to feel a little motion sickness while building a form. :stareyes: Maybe it just takes getting used to. Thanks again!

     

  • Martin_Sykes's avatar
    Martin_Sykes
    Copper Contributor
    Feb 03, 2023

    Looks great, performs like garbage, 900+ mb of ram for 1 tab on chrome and firefox my 1 year old laptop lagged and i had to close it, concerned about staff who have 10 year old pc's. Is there away to disable it?

  • Edward Whishaw's avatar
    Edward Whishaw
    Copper Contributor
    May 27, 2023

    I have a colleague at work who has raised a concern regarding animations like fireworks having the potential to trigger photo-sensitive epilepsy. How are you testing your live backgrounds you ensure they cannot accidentally be opened without warning on the content and/or how can users inhibit all live backgrounds?

  • AndyB425's avatar
    AndyB425
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 17, 2023

    I was surprised to see that Animated Themes do not respect the user setting to turn off windows animations. Would it be possible to turn off animations for the creator and recipients if they have Turn off Windows Animations selected?

    Likewise, as Edward suggests I think it would be beneficial to have the ability to decline to see animated backgrounds in advance, even if a user has not set the Turn off Windows Animations setting. This is because not all people who might be affected by motion, or have photosensitive epilepsy, or vestibular disorders will know that they can turn off animations!

     

  • Ed_Web1580's avatar
    Ed_Web1580
    Copper Contributor
    Apr 10, 2023

    Hi!

    I can't upload the video :cry:, hope you make this available soon