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