Forum Discussion
Forms: Time input question
In Office 365 Forms, I am attempting to create an event request form. I do not appear to be able to add a question for TIME of Day. I see a template for DATE but not TIME. In Google Forms "include Time" is an option for Date Questions in the contextual sub-menu. Is there someplace to add this function perhaps that I am missing? Ultimately I would like to add a script to the form that would auto-create an Outlook Calendar event on a shared calendar at the date and time on the form submission.
96 Replies
It's insane that this has been requested since 2016 and still no time field.
Here's a quick description of how I've worked around this problem. I'll try to do a write up and share here soon.
I built a fairly complicated flow in Power Automate to parse the different ways in which I was seeing folks submitting times. I'm certain there are easier and more efficient ways to do it, but I just made it work with the knowledge and skill I had at the time.
I asked people to submit times in the format hh:mm am/pm. some do most do not.
- I check to see if the time submitted is the word "noon" and set a variable accordingly if so. If not...
- I check to see whether the submitted time contains a colon, indicating it is formatted "properly". if so, i split the time at the colon and Set variables for hour and minutes accordingly. If not...
- If no colon in the submitted start time, I guess that only a 1 or 2 digit number was entered "2 pm" for instance. I don't suspect anyone will put "230 pm" when they mean "2:30 pm". So i loop through the characters in the string one by one extracting only the numbers. then set that number as the hours and set the minutes to "00"
- Next, I check to see whether the hours variable is equal to "12". If so I do nothing. If not...
- I check to see whether the submitted time contains a "p" or a "P" indicating the time is in the afternoon. If so, I add 12 to the hours variable to obtain a 24 hour time. If not, I do nothing.
- Then I format a string in whatever format is needed to create the event or submit to sharepoint or whatever it is i'm doing with that date. Often that is UTC. if so I do a time conversion.
I'll give more details and potentially share a flow as soon as I can.
Can't believe Microsoft is struggling to implement such a primary feature for the best part of a decade.
I will try power BI.
- They're not struggling. They've chosen to make it an extra cost. they've deliberately crippled their own product to squeeze another nickel from their customers. Same thing happening with power automate connectors. Simple requests that are broadly desired go unanswered.
- No other possible reason for this!! Such a strange strategy though as it just makes us go to other non-microsoft products or creates a bad user experience for all of us.
Any updates yet?!
- Just can't believe it!!
Question since 2016 and in a few years it will be a decade now!
This is such a simple requirement and must not take so many years! William Mattison I found this in the feedback site, hopefully voting for adding times might raise it's priority
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/caf5e69c-d01c-ec11-b6e7-0022481f8eda
- hi, I dont know if someone has suggested this but try using military time and asking the person doing the form to use this format hh%MM when submitting their response (ex 10%00 or 15%00 ) then when you download the responses select your time inputs and replace the Percent sign with colon and it should format the entry as time. if you already have entries as 10:00 simply replace the : with % then switch the back and it should format the entries.
- How is that a solution though if you receive a few hundred per day?
Why not just create a date time object? This has been going on for 3 and a half years now!
I just get my users to input 24 hour time stile without the colon. Works ok except from 0000 to 0959 (Drops the leading zero).
- Microsoft plz
William Mattison I wonder why this important feature was neglected, though it does record in the background but this was suppose to be added as well for some nature of surveys..
Wow...almost five years & STILL no result. This is why we are in the process of moving to google for all our office applications.
- Yes, i guess it is good to keep bumping this thread
- Any updates on this?
- Aside from the date picker, time picker is also very useful in collecting data or survey. Hope this feature will be available the soonest. This feature is somehow available in google forms. Hope in microsoft forms too.
- Yes, how about an update on this Microsoft?
Thread started 2016. Now 2021 and we can not ask for time.
Forms Pro launched, i thought that would include a few more advance options on building the form, like time that seems to be highly advanced.
All solutions to ask form time are free text fields and users put random crap in that you need to clean before it can be used.
I vote yes.
