Forum Discussion
Creating new Forms generates a generic Excel result sheet (not associated with Form)
Hello Forms Community, I have a problem I can't find an answer for. I think it might be a bug? Here it is... When I go to create a Group Form and then go to my Onedrive Group location to vi...
I had a call with Microsoft today regarding our problem. We were able to screenshare and demonstrate our issue. Our tech agent then was able to replicate the same issue...put us on hold for some time and came back with a workaround solution. But the workaround didn't work for us. So just to recap our problem...we create a new form in the Groups area, then go to OneDrive and all we see is a generic spreadsheet titled "Untiltled form.xlsx" that contains no data.
The fix she said is to go to the ellipsis within the Response tab and click the Sync option...but the problem is, we don't have the 4th menu item titled "Sync".
So now we are waiting for them to research why it is we don't have the Sync option. I told her I think it might be related to the fact that when we create an Excel spreadsheet inside the OneDrive group we don't see Insert | Survey … but when I create an Excel spreadsheet from my OneDrive (non group) I see the Insert | Survey icon. I think that is where it gets disconnected. She didn't really think that was the issue, so we will see.
Let us know how you go. Hopefully they fix this so you can get back to it!
Cheers
Damien
OK so we got passed around to 3 different case managers; Office 365, Excel, SharePoint...none of them had real answers. So the final answer we got was "It's broken by design." I think what she meant was, you are a Government License and the feature for syncing the form to a spreadsheet is something you don't have access to (even though it creates a blank .xlsx worksheet when creating a new form).
So I guess we just don't have the backend sync connectors because we are a lower level license. I asked why it creates the spreadsheet giving the impression that it should work...and again I got the answer "It's by design". So we will wait until it shows up in another 2 years.
Thanks for trying to help. I'm thinking perhaps there might be a workaround using Flow, so that is what I'm looking into now.
Hi es_en
Thanks for letting me know how you went.
Flow might be a good alternative. You could put the survey results into a SharePoint list and then extract what you need either in a flow or manually.
There are also Flow connectors that can put data in spreadsheets as well like Plumsail.
Some food for thought.
Best wishes!!!
Cheers
Damien
OK a new development on this. So yesterday I went to one of the test forms I had created for the MS engineer on one of the support calls. It's a Group Form, really simple one. I filled it out, then went to check the generic sheet it had created when I originally created the form...and my answer was there!!!
So I then created a new form again, really simple. I put a response in, then went to Onedrive and saw the new generically named spreadsheet, opened it and saw the response. Then, I opened a dedicated window for the spreadsheet, and in another window responded to the form...and within 10seconds I saw a flash where a box came up that said [SharePoint is editing the document] and the response showed up below the other. OK this is what I was expecting...so it looks like the connector piece is getting rolled out to Government accounts?
The only thing missing now is the naming of the sheet. I'd expect the name of the sheet to match the name I gave the form. It does work in my personal government form creation, just not in the Group area.
I'll update you if (when) the naming gets fixed too.