Forum Discussion
Duplicate responses in Excel
kellyhickman14096 Thanks for the clarification, Since you’re already using the right trigger from Microsoft Forms, and still seeing two different response IDs for a single submission, it definitely sounds like a backend sync glitch or timing issue between Forms and the Power Automate trigger, it’s intermittent and could be tied to latency or a momentary hiccup in Microsoft’s services
Unfortunately, since the duplicates aren’t consistent and Forms itself is generating the IDs, there’s no solid fix yet. Until Microsoft addresses it on their end, your best bet is to build a small check inside your flow, maybe compare timestamps or user input to spot and skip duplicates before SharePoint items are created.
hopefully Microsoft improves this behavior soon
The best way to avoid this is by using the "When a new response is submitted" trigger directly from Microsoft Forms in Power Automate, instead of watching the Excel file. That method is more stable and does not rely on Excel syncs. If you still need to use Excel, try including something unique in your form, like a timestamp or user email, and set your flow to check if that data already exists before creating anything in SharePoint. Also, keep the Excel file closed while syncing being open in multiple places can cause extra updates and mess with the sync process.
Marcus-Apps4rent Thank you for responding, I truly appreciate it. I do use the trigger you mention in Power automate, my issue is that the form response is sending two separate response ID's for the exact same submission to my flow, which then creates two sharepoint list items, as is expected behavior. I am confused as to why the Form creates two separate response ID's for the same submission. My suspicion is that it has something to do with the timing of the sync from the Forms to the flow, perhaps the sync experiences latency at certain times. This duplication doesn't happen all the time. I guess I'll just have to watch it and delete dupes as they come in. I feel like there is no clear fix here.
kellyhickman14096 Thanks for the clarification, Since you’re already using the right trigger from Microsoft Forms, and still seeing two different response IDs for a single submission, it definitely sounds like a backend sync glitch or timing issue between Forms and the Power Automate trigger, it’s intermittent and could be tied to latency or a momentary hiccup in Microsoft’s services
Unfortunately, since the duplicates aren’t consistent and Forms itself is generating the IDs, there’s no solid fix yet. Until Microsoft addresses it on their end, your best bet is to build a small check inside your flow, maybe compare timestamps or user input to spot and skip duplicates before SharePoint items are created.
hopefully Microsoft improves this behavior soonMarcus-Apps4rent Interesting suggestion, to include a compare timestamp step in a flow. I'll try to figure out how to do that, unless you know of an article that shows how to set that up and can post here? :) Thanks again!
You are welcome, Kelly!
Here's a quick way you can approach the timestamp comparison in Power Automate
After the "Get response details" step from Microsoft Forms, you can add a step to search your SharePoint list for existing items that have the same timestamp or a unique field (like a submission ID or email). You’d use the “Get items” action, then apply a Filter Query like this
SubmissionTimestamp eq '2025-06-06T14:22:00Z'
To avoid hardcoding, you can insert the dynamic timestamp from the form response into the query.
Then, use a “Condition” step to check if the output from “Get items” returns zero results. Only if it finds nothing, you proceed to create the new item otherwise, the flow ends without adding a duplicate.
Here’s a helpful guide from Microsoft that breaks this logic down
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/sp-add-ins/working-with-lists-and-list-items-with-rest#filtering-items