Excel Does Not Sync Until Opened

TIBN79... sort of.

Turns out it was an intentional change from Microsoft - here is a blog post about how the the linked Excel document has to be manually opened to sync:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftformsblog/update-to-the-new-solution-for-syncing-forms-responses-to-excel/4229844/

Since this was an intentional change from Microsoft, I am not optimistic that it will be "fixed" in the sense of returning to real-time syncing instead of having to manually open the Excel file. The workaround would be to use Power Automate to update the Excel file or a SharePoint list with the MS Form submission data.

Continue using the Excel

The issue with using Power Automate to update the Excel spreadsheet, you will end up with duplicated submissions because the flow would update the spreadsheet and the spreadsheet would automatically sync when opened.

To avoid this, you can go to the form and go through the process of syncing the form to a new Excel spreadsheet. You can then use Power Automate (add row in Excel) to update the original spreadsheet with new submission data without being concerned that opening the file will sync to MS Forms and create duplicate entries.

In this scenario, the new spreadsheet the MS Form is now synced to is essentially a dummy and not used for anything functionally - it just exists and is synced whenever opened. The old spreadsheet (containing historical data) will continue to be updated via Power Automate.

Create and Update a SharePoint List

Alternatively, create a list in SharePoint (or MS Lists) that matches the data collected in your MS Form / the Excel spreadsheet - I believe you can even create the list from uploading an example spreadsheet as well as bulk load historical data.

Use Power Automate to create a new item in the list and populate it with the details from the Forms submission - this way you aren't using the Excel spreadsheet in a real-time way.

In this scenario, the SharePoint is the primary data location and the Excel spreadsheet just kind of exists as a backup and syncs with Forms - the data should match all the original data collected in Forms but would not represent any changes made by Power Automate in the SharePoint list after the submission (i.e. marking an item as approved).

Sucks but hope this helps.