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Microsoft Forms Blog
2 MIN READ

Introducing Forms data sync to Excel

junyuB's avatar
junyuB
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jan 23, 2024

The highly anticipated feature Forms data sync to Excel is now available in Microsoft Forms. With just one click, you can now easily access all your form responses in Excel for the web and take advantage of Excel’s rich functions to analyze and visualize your data. With automatic syncing of new responses in real-time, you can keep working on your existing spreadsheet without missing a beat. No more juggling multiple copies of the same file, making it easier than ever to stay on top of important data. Ready to check out this feature? Let’s get started! You can also try out this feature from this template. 

 

Open responses in Excel

Open any active form or quiz, go to the "Responses" page and click "Open results in Excel". This will automatically create an Excel worksheet in your OneDrive and take you to Excel for the web, where you'll see all your data in just a few seconds.  

 

Open response in Excel

 

 

Deeper analysis in Excel

In Excel, you can manipulate the data the way you want and leverage various tools to do further analysis, like sorting, filtering, and inserting charts.

 

Manipulate data in Excel

 

New responses sync to Excel

New responses will automatically sync when you open your Excel file for the web, allowing you to seamlessly continue your existing work.

 

New response sync to Excel

 

Let’s review two real user cases to see how Excel data sync solved their problems to give you some inspiration on how to leverage this feature.

 

Business scenario

A company uses Excel to manually log every office facility request in a workbook that is shared among different departments for manual status updates and reporting. By using Forms data sync to Excel, they can instead distribute one office facility form through Microsoft Forms and share the Excel workbook of responses. Each department can then review newly synced requests and update the request status they are responsible for accordingly.

 

Education scenario 

Middle school teachers utilize online quizzes for in-class testing. After class, they consolidate various classes' quiz results into an Excel file for deeper analysis, aiming to identify students' weaknesses and provide targeted support. 

 

With Forms, multiple classes can use one quiz, and the results will be synced to a single worksheet, eliminating the need for teachers to manually combine quiz results from different classes. The teacher can add a question for class identification and use the filter in Excel to easily distinguish one class from another. 

 

Please note that Forms data sync to Excel is currently only available in Excel for the Web. While you can still view your data with the desktop and mobile apps, new responses will not be automatically synced unless you are using Excel for the Web.

Updated Jan 24, 2024
Version 2.0

88 Comments

  • utkgreg's avatar
    utkgreg
    Copper Contributor

    Same issue as Julia_SG and Wyn Hopkins: When I click "Open results in Excel" it automatically downloads an excel file that I need to open with a desktop version of Excel.

     

    Creating the form in a Group does allow the web functionality to work- Thanks Wyn! Hopefully others see these comments, it would have been helpful if the author had included that detail.

     

    Another edit from a couple days later: The real-time web functionality only worked for me if I created the Form under a non-Teams-enabled Group. If I used a Group that was visible in Teams, I could only get static XLSX downloads of the results, it would not exhibit the real-time web functionality.

  • rjhale's avatar
    rjhale
    Copper Contributor

    These types of small, incremental improvements are appreciated, but we're still wondering when some of the bigger items like including a people picker on the form or direct integration with SharePoint will be rolled out?  I believe Microsoft showed both of these items on a roadmap preview from 6 or 7 months ago (which I can't seem to find any longer).  

  • DennisASW's avatar
    DennisASW
    Copper Contributor

    It seems to only work for group forms for me as well.

    Is it supposed to work for both individual and group forms?

    If not yet, will it eventually work for both individual and group forms?

    I hope that it will work for both individual and group forms soon.

  • Julia_SG's avatar
    Julia_SG
    Copper Contributor

    This is not working for me. When I click "Open results in Excel" it automatically downloads an excel file that I need to open with a desktop version of Excel. I would like it to open an excel worksheet in my excel online/onedrive like in the post. Please let me know how I can fix this. 

  • Finally! Thank you! That's a great and long time due improvement. 

    Next, I would like to be able to save these files in SharePoint and not OneDrive only. 

    I have seen that different Forms features are available depending on where you start your form (from Forms or from Excel). It is confusing. It would be nice to have one unique Forms version across. 

  • MegPhelps's avatar
    MegPhelps
    Brass Contributor

    There seems to be a significant lag time in updates. Anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours, in a few instances even days later the excel sheet is not updated. Can users trigger a manual sync between Form responses and the associated excel sheet? Is this a known issue? Any fixes in sight? 

  • everart_araujo's avatar
    everart_araujo
    Copper Contributor

    Nice improvement🙏🏼 finally :party_popper:. Now can we add data to the questions itself from the excel? That will be definitely the best improvement in years. For example add a list of countries into the Excel and that list show as a drop-down question inside the form. Or the possibility to save questions so you can just drag and drop questions from your saved questions to the for itself please 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼