Manage Your Forms Easily with Ownership Transfer
Published Nov 15 2018 11:55 PM 339K Views
Microsoft

With Microsoft Form’s new ownership transfer feature, you can now move a form you’ve created to Group forms so that all members of your group also become “owners” and have full editing capabilities. Your newly transferred form will also inherit all the features of a group form, such as its responses stored in the SharePoint site of the group, the ability to share the form in your group’s Team channel, etc.

 

To transfer ownership of a form and share it with a group, go to My forms and click on More form actions (…) on the top right corner of your form. Select “Move”, and then select the group you want to transfer to, then confirm the move.

 

Ownership transfer MVP1.gif

 

 

After the transfer completes, the moved form is still active, and you can click Open in Excel in the Responses tab of your form and review your responses.

 

 

I can transfer ownership of a form to one of my groups. Can I perform the reverse and transfer ownership of a group form to myself?

The ownership of a form can be transferred from an individual to a group, but not the other way around.

 

Can I transfer a form that is shared with me to a group I belong to?

You can only transfer ownership of a form to a group you belong to if you’re the original owner of that form. You may not transfer the ownership of form that is shared with you.

 

I transferred the ownership of my form to a group and want to download responses to an Excel file. How do I do this?

When you click on “Open in Excel” in the Responses tab, a workbook with your responses will open in Excel Online. You can also find this Excel workbook in the Document folder of your group’s SharePoint site.

 

Where is the Excel workbook with my responses stored and can I move it?

The Excel workbook with responses is stored in the Document folder of your group’s SharePoint site. We recommend you don’t move it as new responses coming in won’t be recorded within that workbook.

 

112 Comments
Former Employee

@BYRON_ABBOTT this shouldn't be the case.  The Form should still exist and be available for those in the Group and with the link.  We cannot reproduce this, but want to help get to the bottom of this.  I'll message you directly for more info.  Thanks!

Brass Contributor

2020-04-24 12_49_54-Microsoft Forms Pro _ Group forms and 2 more pages - Work - Microsoft​ Edge.png

2020-04-24 12_50_33-Microsoft Forms Pro _ Group forms and 2 more pages - Work - Microsoft​ Edge.png

Transferred a Forms Pro form with responses to a Group, now all the responses are unavailable but the tile for the form still shows the number of responses and it keeps increasing as more people complete the form.

 
Copper Contributor

I suggest creating a new spreadsheet for the replies.

Brass Contributor

Thanks for the idea but I don't think Forms PRO uses the excel file to store the data, there wasn't one when it was in my Forms account and I tried creating one in the group but no success.

Microsoft

@Dan Robson sorry to hear about the expereince. @Welly Lee for the FormsPro question. 

Microsoft

Dan -- forms pro does not support group form yet. Please contact me at welly.lee@microsoft.com to get the survey response data.

Brass Contributor

@Welly LeeMany thanks for reaching out, I sent you an email on Friday 24th April at 20.04 UK time with the subject "Microsoft Forms Pro - Tech Community Post" just in case you miss it.  I appreciate any help you can offer to help me retrieve the form responses.

Microsoft

@Dan Robson - I got your email and sent you a suggested workaround. Please email me if that does not work

Copper Contributor

Hi @Welly Lee 

Will this feature ever be available in MS Forms Pro? Or is there another suggested way to work with MS Forms Pro in organizations?

Thanks

Microsoft

We are working on group form support. Please email me at welly.lee@microsoft.com to discuss if you may be interested to become early customers

Copper Contributor

I can't move Forms from one group to another. How can I enable this feature?

Copper Contributor

Hi @Si Meng and the MS Forms Team, I like the product but really struggling with the absence of a move between groups feature.  This is a problem for us.  We have forms shared into a group, we have some good responses, but we want to move the form to another more restricted group.  I can see no way to do this.  When do you expect that this feature will be available?

Copper Contributor

Hi, I have a user that is trying to move a Form from their personal 'My Forms' to a 'Group Forms', however, when they select the 'Move' option on the form that they wish to move, the list of destinations that should appear on left is empty. They are an owner of the group that they are trying to move the form too. Has anyone seen this behaviour before?

 

Move from: https://company-tenant-my.sharepoint.com/personal/personal_sharepoint_companyname_com/_layouts/15/on...?
Move to: https://company-tenant.sharepoint.com/teams/xxx/xxxxxxxxxx/SitePages/Home.aspx

 

Thanks

Brass Contributor

@dajackson 

 

Yes, when I hit that problem, I had to make myself a member of the destination group as well.  It takes a few minutes for the change to take effect, but then it should show up as a destination when you click the Move option.

Brass Contributor

If it's a Forms Pro form they can't be moved into groups yet.

Copper Contributor

Hi, I am working as an intern and have created certain forms that need to be accessed post the completion of my stint. I had made the forms using mail ID provided by the parent organization (abc@adityabirla.com ), but the forms need to be accessed by teams present on the subsidiary company's ID (xyz@abfrl.adityabirla.com ) (both have outlook accounts). Now when I am trying to move the forms, it only gives me option to transfer it to groups on parent company ID. @Si Meng Can you help me with this?

 

TIA

Former Employee

@Chirantan1803 - unfortunately no.  We do not support moving a form between tenants (companies).  You can use the template/duplicate function to copy the blank form, and you can export the results to excel from the original form for archival, but you cannot fully move the form + responses over together. 

Copper Contributor

So, has there been any update on if we can transfer a form to a person yet?  If I add it to a group and then leave the group will the other members still be able to access the data?

Former Employee

@teachingfran - not quite yet on the person->person transfer.  yes, if you transfer to a group and then leave, it'll stay there and be accessible to other group members that remain

Brass Contributor

Transferring ownership to a group is great, except when group members don't pay attention and overwrite the form questions when testing.  It would be great to be able to either set group rights on the form by group members  such as View only, View/Edit, View/Edit/Delete or transfer ownership to an individual.

 

Thank you for your consideration of these requests.

Copper Contributor

@Si Meng @Jon_Kay Is there any update on administrating the Forms created by previous employees (Msol object is no longer exists) like transferring the ownership to a group or person? 

I don't see the Forms admin site yet, just curious if there is other way to do this. 

Thank you! 

Copper Contributor

I accidentally transferred a form to a group. How do I get it back? 

Copper Contributor

I accidentally transferred ownership of a Form to My Groups. This should NOT be a Group Form; I had actually wanted to share the link to the group so they could respond to the form. I do not want the group to have control, nor do I want them to see the responses. Is there a way to transfer the ownership back to just me? Or do I have to recreate the form in My Forms?

Microsoft

Hi JodiDreyer,

Currently we don't have the feature to transfer the form back from Group to User, so you need to delete the form from the group and re-create it, you can use share as template to easily re-create the form. Sorry for the inconvenience 

Copper Contributor

Hello @Si Meng , after move the form to the group, the original creator still receive the email notification.

Any idea? thanks

Former Employee

@walvisam365  -  a few of us have tried this but cannot reproduce it.  Can you please describe the steps in a bit more detail and let us know if you can reproduce this with other forms too?

 

Note, group forms can receive email notifications, as long as the group is setup to receive mail.  see: 

No email notifications for responses to Group Forms - Office | Microsoft Docs

 

so if you move the form to a group that you belong to, and the group is setup properly to receive mails, you'd still receive the notification that way 

Copper Contributor

Using office 365 forms I have no option to move forms from personal account to group forms. 

 

Only option I have is open im browser, add to pinned and remove from list. 

 

Please help

Microsoft

@tomvog When you are talking personal form, are you using account from a tenant (Business Account) or your personal account? 

Copper Contributor

@Yao Ke  business account in our office365 organization. 

Copper Contributor

Hello, I do not see Group Forms - Office 365 Education.  Is this something IT must turn on?  This is my current view from App launcher 

place_s_0-1610645942524.png

as well as from forms.office.com

place_s_1-1610645980435.png

Any help support would be appreciated @Si Meng Thank you @

Microsoft

@Jon_Kay Please advice here, seems the feature is missing from the new portal page.

Copper Contributor

Thanks so much for the quick response @Jon_Kay I thought I was looking my mind....refreshing...logging out...searching.  I appreciate the response.  Preparing for professional development for our institution and would like to share this with the team.  :lol:

Former Employee

@place_s  on the Recent tab, scroll down the page and you will find Groups.  We will continue to refine the layout, thanks for the feedback!

Brass Contributor

@Jon_Kay - can we PLEASE alpha sort the groups on both the My Groups page AND in the menu when you're looking to move a form from Personal to a Group. Search option would also be a welcome addition on both interfaces. My other issue is as an Admin who has access to MANY groups, my list is extensive. In fact a large amount do not appear. I see tons of groups that have absolutely no relevance and I cannot get to the really important ones. I end up having to ask a group member to navigate to their Group Form page and send me the URL. I've learned now to save those so I can get back because I cannot get there from the Forms portal interface. Search would dramatically help here ...

Brass Contributor

I created a form and wanted to transfer ownership of the form to a group that I am Owner of.  The group never appeared in the Move listing.  I checked both Teams and the O365 group and confirmed that I am an Owner of both.

 

In an earlier post, another community member noted that one had to be a member of the Team/group to be able to transfer ownership.  Teams says that I cannot be a member because I am already an owner.

 

I then went into O365 Admin and in that case can be both an Owner and a Member of the group.  When I made myself a member as well as an owner, I was able to transfer ownership.  

 

I did this because it was the only way that I could find that all Team members could see the same results spreadsheet.  However, I have found that once ownership of a form is transferred my abilities to make changes even though I am the creator become limited.  I know that ownership transfer is a one way street, although I think that this is wrong.

 

So two requests.  One, clean up the process so creators can transfer ownership of a form to a group without having to be a group member.  That's a security problem since we tend to do the creation work for departments and want to hand off once done without having membership to a zillion groups.  Second, fix the Forms product so as an Admin of the system I can move form ownership around as needed without having to be a group/team owner or member and make form ownership change simple.  

 

I like to use Forms because it is quick and when I outgrow its limitations and there are many because Power Automate breaks regularly once a form owner is changed, I have to go to a third party product for simple web forms.  That costs unnecessary money and is another vendor to manage.  While this is not the Power Automate community, having to parse a long URL to do automation with group owned forms is really pretty ridiculous.  As an Admin of the entire company, I should not have to do this ridiculous work around.

Copper Contributor

@Jon_Kay

@Si Meng 

I also have the updated version and I don't see the "move" option for the form. I used to see the option there in the old version but not on the new one.

 

eunicecastanos_0-1611862503445.png

 

Copper Contributor

I am having the same problem as @eunicecastanos above. I've always been able to transfer ownership and it is no longer providing the option. Any information or assistance would be appreciated. 

 

Former Employee

@eunicecastanos  @JayShallConquer  You can find the copy/move functions on the 2nd page. Scroll down about 1/2 way on the Recent tab to find the "All my forms" link.  There you will see all of your forms, and each has move/copy in the "..." menu.  Soon we will bring that back to the Recent tab.  Thanks!

Copper Contributor

Hi, all! I'm the original owner of a form. I've moved the form into a group. Will the form keep alive after I leave the organization?

According to my understanding, the form should still be alive after I leave. But the other day when the form encountered a synchronization error, only me received the alert email. Other members in that group didn't receive the email. I'm wondering whether this means the ownership hasn't changed?

Thanks for your kind attention!

Copper Contributor

Any update on being able to transfer ownership from a group to an individual? I tried to vote for this on UserVoice but that didn't work either.

Copper Contributor

@Si Meng On ‎Dec 07 2018 10:29 AM, you indicated that Form transferring as an Admin feature "... is being worked on", any update? It's been over three years. Is there at least provide a PowerShell script to get this done so companies don't look for other solutions because Microsoft Forms cannot take into account employee turnover.

 

@Jon_Kay On ‎Aug 02 2020 07:33 PM, you indicated that Form transferring from person to person is "... note quite yet ..." a feature. It's been over two years. Status update?

Copper Contributor

Ditto on what @tp_ahaas said. Over three years since you guys said you were working on providing some sort of admin access to Forms and still nothing. It's a nightmare every time an employee leaves and we find out months later that they were owners of Forms that are still active.

Copper Contributor

Hello,

I have created evaluation surveys in Forms.  I will be retiring and would like my replacement. to have access to these forms as owner without moving it to the Group as there is sensitive information for the owner only.

 

Thank you.

Teresa

Microsoft

Hi tfossett, you can create a group, only add the new owner to that group, and transfer the form to that group, with that, only the new owner can access 

Copper Contributor

Thank you so much @Yao Ke !  Never crossed my mind to create a group with adding that one person as owner!   Very much appreciate your response!  Best, Teresa

Brass Contributor

Really ruing the day I transferred the form to the group. Now I can't get it back. I didn't realise that everyone in the group will have full editing rights when I transferred it to the group. We have a few users in the group who simply cannot comprehend that they need to hit the preview to complete responses. They will never need to edit the form, just submit. But now the form is stuck in the group with no possibility of fixing the situation. A terrible 'solution' M$. As others have said, you have been saying for years that we will be able to transfer a form out of a group. Surely this is not a hugely difficult thing to do, but maybe you don't have the technical expertise to do this. I'm feeling pretty frustrated about this.

Copper Contributor

@KarlInOz It wouldn't be so bad if there was an undo or roll back function...but there isn't.

I have an annual form I send out to my team which I tweak from year to year. Many times I've accidentally edited the wrong one, because I can't select a form from an ordered list. Instead I get a randomly ordered 'recent' list. God help anyone who doesn't pin their form. If it drops off the 'recent' list it's lost forever.

Copper Contributor

@Simon1100 
"Instead I get a randomly ordered 'recent' list. God help anyone who doesn't pin their form. If it drops off the 'recent' list it's lost forever."

Not sure if this is the same look for everyone but I see a 'My forms' button which changes from the default 'Recent' list.
Additionally there is a 'Filter by keyword' to the right, which is quite useful.

MyForms.PNG

Copper Contributor

@KarlInOz 
"...be able to transfer a form out of a group"

 

It is possible with a few convoluted steps as follows:
- open the form in edit view
- click ellipses
- Collaborate or Duplicate
- Share as a template

FormTransferOutOfGroup.PNG
When opening the copied URL a button to 'Duplicate it' is presented.
Form title might now include (copy) and is saved to your 'My Forms' and 'Recent'.
https://forms.office.com/Pages/DesignPageV2.aspx  may need a quick refresh before they appear.

Note: The responses are not copied across from the group form.

Old Group form can be deleted after backing up responses if required.

To prevent anyone else from editing (collaborate) the form, share the only the URL from 'Collect responses' formatted as: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=Gdyl...

Copper Contributor

I'm uncertain of what the logic is in this case, but I was caught out as a result because:

 

1.) Move function is NOT bi-directional! You can only move once and to one group.

2.) Once a form has been moved to a Group, it is no longer selectable from the drop-down list in Power Automate (Flow) logic.

3.) Any existing Power Automate logic that had been preconfigured to use the said form, now fails to function.

 

The only fix for this is to manually recreate the form from the perspective of the account identity (service account, etc) that is used to create the Flow logic, then reconfigure the objects and expressions in the flow to make it functional again.

 

Now we know what we lose by moving a form to a Group, can someone explain what it is we gain again?

:\ 

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