Anonymous responses on Office forms: is there any way to have their email or name?

No worries at all, Rob_Elliott.

Enjoy your week ahead!

Cheers

Damien

Damien_Rosario yes I think I did misinterpret what you were saying, my apologies.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User.
Principal Consultant, SharePoint and Power Platform WSP Global (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

Hi Rob_Elliott 

I think you misunderstood my comment and are probably reading a bit too much into it.

Guy_Boswell was indicating that my response to a recent question about retrieving the identity of an anonymous submitter, where I indicated that this isn't possible, was an obvious fact and not adding anything to the conversation.

I responded that it isn't necessarily obvious to all users as we still see questions from MTC members asking if it's possible to know who the anonymous submitter is. As experienced users, we know that it isn't possible, and that is why I responded with a simple answer to let them know it isn't possible.

This thread is long-running and if you read through you'll see repetitive questions from different users asking the same thing and us, as forum members, responding with the same answers. These are the educational contributions that we make to each other. I enjoy it.

To your other comment, I agree that saying a form is anonymous and then secretly having a way to find out who submitted the response is a serious breach of privacy laws across many countries and is a terrible idea! I wouldn't ever suggest doing that and, legalities aside, I think it would be a massive breach of trust if Microsoft did that.

Lastly, I think the Forms Pro features were rolled into Dynamics 365 Customer Voice which would already have embedded controls to manage GDPR and other legal requirements like Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing (CRM) does today.

Cheers

Damien

Guy_Boswell "They should be able to waive their anonymity and provide us with their email address.  Without them having to type their email address in and potentially get it wrong." An interesting idea.  Might be worth adding it to the feedback portal. By explicitly opting in (as it would have to be) that would comply with GDPR if that opt-in detail was recorded.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User.
Principal Consultant, SharePoint and Power Platform WSP Global (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

Damien_Rosario "I disagree that it's a truism that anonymous forms cannot retrieve the submitter". If you are saying that there should be a way to get submitter information on an anonymous form that the submitter has not entered themselves or agreed to then I strongly disagree. To do this would be illegal in most territories. In the UK and EU it would be a severe breach of GDPR leading to a potential fine of up to 4% of worldwide revenue. You cannot tell a user or indicate to them that the information is anonymous and then get (and presumably use) information about them. Completely illegal! And it would quickly get Forms banned in most organisations.

If it was available in Forms Pro then I bet Microsoft have subsequently removed it for GDPR reasons, and rightly so.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User.
Principal Consultant, SharePoint and Power Platform WSP Global (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

Hi Guy_Boswell 

I disagree that it's a truism that anonymous forms cannot retrieve the submitter, which is why we're still fielding questions about it today.

I vaguely recall there being email address fields and I think custom link options (?) in Microsoft Forms Pro when that was around, though as you may recall it was an additional subscription cost for Pro at the time. Having that option in Microsoft Forms would be useful.

A required text field to capture an email address, whilst not perfect, is a viable option for now. Once in a while, someone may make a typo in their email address, but overall, it's still a reasonable option to exercise for anonymous forms. Coupled with Power Automate workflows, it can be a powerful solution and I believe our tech community has the collective knowledge to assist with individual scenarios.

I'm betting the good folks in the Microsoft Forms team have a backlog of requests to implement, and hopefully, feedback like this will make it into their thought processes and eventually their roadmap!

Cheers and best wishes

Damien

Damien_Rosario obviously there is no way to know who answered anonymously.  That is a truism.

The point of the original question is why can't we have attributed answers on a form that allows external conacts to answer.

Data protection and all that - we can't force people to give us their emails.  Absolutely right and how it should be.

But we aren't forcing them to answer.  They want to answer and they want us to know who the answer is coming from.

They should be able to waive their anonymity and provide us with their email address.  Without them having to type their email address in and potentially get it wrong.

Especially when we already have their email address - we sent them the link to the form in an email!!!

They are friendly contacts, volunteers and supporters of the charity, who send us information regularly.  But they are not allowed to tell us who they are by providing their email address!  What is this maddness?

Damien_Rosario Thank you 

Welcome_CPC 

The option to capture respondents email addresses is applicable to respondents within your organisation only.  Others, for external respondents, they will come anonymous.

Regards,

Susan

Hi Welcome_CPC 

Unfortunately, there's no way to know who sent in the anonymous responses.

Cheers

Damien

SWakonyo if they are exrternal users, even though you've sent them the link by email, Forms has no way of knowing that and the lin k is not specific to the respondent which is why you have to ask them for their email address. If Microsoft was to changethe format of the link so that it was specific to the person it was sent to - by somehow incorporating the email address - then that would solve your issue and be a big step forward.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Intranet, SharePoint, Website and Power Platform Manager (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

Guy_Boswell hahahah ! I might have to come back to this thread many more times then!!!

bailey123 It always is more difficult than the guidance 😉  That is why they pay us the big bucks to make it work ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Guy_Boswell 

Thanks Guy, trying to an election electronically and its proving to be more difficult than set out in the guidance!

bailey123 

If they have an organisational email address you could tick the box

It will not be anonymous by default but you could copy the anonymous data columns to another spreadsheet using Power Automate.

If they aren't in your organisation they will be anonymous by default but you will not be able to readily enforce one response per person

Guy

Guy_Boswell 

Hi I am asking I want  the form to remain anonymous.  I am planning to do an election vote, I wish to send an email to all in  our organisation with a link to Microsoft teams form.  I wish for the return of the form to remain anonymous and also with just one response (as only allowed 1 vote per person)

Our email goes out via RS Connect system and I have been advised by our communication's officer this is not possible to have anonymous returns?

RobElliottyou say Forms can't do that, but wouldn't it be more accurate to say it *doesn't*? It must be technically possible, as SurveyMonkey has that capability.

Hi samuelrossids 

Unfortunately, Forms does not do what you have asked. At least vanilla Forms doesn't do this, not sure about Forms Pro as I don't use it, so perhaps someone else can chime in on that part, but in the end my understanding is that Forms is not designed for this sort of use.

Best wishes and stay safe

Damien

Damien_Rosario what we need to be able to do is:

send the form to someone outside the organisation 

have that form show the email address the form was sent to

to prevent 1 person sending the same link to other people

Hi Guy_Boswell 

For the anonymous survey, you could make the name and email questions required so they must submit something for the fields.

If you're using Forms Pro, I believe there's validation for email format input, but vanilla Forms doesn't have this functionality.

Unfortunately, someone could submit incorrect or bogus info, but this is the risk we run when a form is anonymous.

Best wishes

Damien

RobElliott 

So close but yet so far!  Forms is really good at what it does but seems very limited

Guy_Boswell you might have sent them a link to the form for them to complete but Forms doesn't know that and cannot pick up that email address and include it in the response.

People in your organisation have an Office 365 Delve profile which includes all their details. If you set the form so that only people in your organisation can respond then it can get the relevant details of the responder. For external people that isn't possible.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User

RobElliott  , the same way we know if they are in our organisation, because they have to access the form via a link sent to them in an email.  So we already know their email.  But if we have sent the link to many people we don't know which of them completed the form