Manage Your Forms Easily with Ownership Transfer
Published Nov 15 2018 11:55 PM 334K 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.

 

111 Comments
Steel Contributor

Excellent, Thank you for the Move feature :smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes::smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes::smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes:

 


 

>You can also find this Excel workbook in the Document folder of your group’s SharePoint site.

This should say the "Documents library" not "Document folder". Folks from Microsoft should use the correct terms.

Copper Contributor

I transferred ownership to a distribution group instead of an actual user, or maybe to a team. How do I do the move? 

Microsoft

Hi @Stephanie Davis, please check out the page in help document on how you can the move. Thanks!

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/transfer-ownership-of-your-form-921a6361-a4e5-44ea-bce9-c4e...

 

 

Brass Contributor

Great feature! Would it be possible to Transfer an individual's Form to Group AFTER the individual left the company? Typical scenario is that Business Users build forms and send it to their teams. Often, these users build individual forms, not Group forms. When this user leaves company and their O 365 account is shut down, there is no way to recover the Form. 

Brass Contributor
How do we move a Form from one Group to another Group?

@humtech it doesn't look like that's possible right now.

Microsoft

@kiran bellala thanks for the question. What you described is an admin feature that is being worked on. Please stay tuned.

Copper Contributor

It would be incredibly helpful to be able to copy forms from one group to another. I used to have an individual form that I would make a copy of for each project where it's needed, then transfer the copied form to the relevant project group, then when this feature was released I moved my master copy of the form into a group, and now I can't make new copies for each project anymore as new copies of the form are all created in the same group that the original form is in.

Copper Contributor

Looks like this function has been removed? When I click on the three dots I have "Copy" and "Trash" but no "Move".

Microsoft

Hi @mfrench  thanks for your comment. This function shouldn't be removed. Could you please share your information with the group (FormsTriage@microsoft.com)? Our engineer team can take a look. 

Copper Contributor

@ Si Meng. Thanks for the response. Tried to e-mail them but got this bounceback error: "The groups only accept messages from people in their organization or on their allowed senders list, and your email address isn't on the lists."

Brass Contributor

When I click the Move button, the list of groups isn't complete, even after clicking the "More" link.  I am the original owner of the form and the owner of the Office 365 Group that I am wanting to move the form to, but the group doesn't show up in the list.

 

UPDATE:

I found one difference between the group I wanted to transfer the form to, and the groups listed when I try to actually move the form.  For the other groups, I was listed as both an Owner and a Member of the group.   For the group I wanted to move the form to, I was only listed as an Owner.

 

So I added myself as a Member to the group in addition to my role as the group owner and after a few minutes the group did show up and I was able to move the ownership of the Form. 

Deleted
Not applicable

Is there any way to reverse a move to a group? What happens if I move a form to the wrong group?

Pretty sure that move is a) a one-way transfer (from personal to group) and b) it's final resting place, because you can't move from one group to another.

Microsoft

Hi @mfrench, sorry about that. Please feel free to send the email to me instead (simeng@microsoft.com), I'll forward it to the distribution list. 

Microsoft

Hi @Deleted, thanks for reaching out. For now the move is one direction from person to group, like @Kevin Crossman mentioned. We're aware of the issues as you stated, and it's in our backlog to improve the experience. 

Copper Contributor

@Si Meng Just checked and now I have the "Move" function. Weird. But all good now, I guess.

Copper Contributor

Hi 

I have recently moved a form to a group. Now when someone responds it seems that no email notification is taking place, even though the box is still ticked do so.

I would have assumed that everyone in the group would have started getting an email response now it belonged to the group?

But as it appears, no one at all is getting an email to notify.

It's also not sending an email to the group - no notification is sent at all from what I can see. 

Is anyone able to help with this please?

 

@PaulaJ11  If you set up an alert in your SharePoint doc library, where the Excel file gets saved/updated when people submit their group forms, you can kind of work around this. I too have seen that email alerts for Group Forms is flakey.

Microsoft

Hi @PaulaJ11 , thank you for the question. In order for the group to receive the notification, the setting at the group level to enable the group to receive any email is also needed (in addition to the notification setting in the form).

One way to enable that is in outlook, in group setting, enable the setting called "Let people outside the organization email the group." Please see the screenshot below.

 

group setting.PNG

 

Thank you again for the question. We will make sure the UI and documentation is updated to reflect this for convenience of future users. 

 

Copper Contributor

Hi @Si Meng 

Thanks so much for getting back to me, I have now made that change within the group but no notification is being sent out/received.

Any further advice please? Really keen to get this working :) 

Thank you,

Paula

Microsoft

@PaulaJ11 I'm sorry about your experience. I'd like to involve our engineer team to look into this. Could you please send the information (link of response page, screenshot of the setting) to simeng@microsoft.com? Thanks!

Copper Contributor

Hi @Si Meng I've just sent an email over now. Thank you for your assistance with this :)

Copper Contributor

Can a form be transferred from group to group?

Microsoft

Hi @Si Meng - any plans to make it possible to transfer personal forms created to be used within Communication sites (not associated with Groups)?   

Iron Contributor

Any plans to provide a possibility to get information for Forms via command line, like via MSGraph? A way to get Forms for specific users and to move the Forms via command line? My opinion is moving a Form via a browser interface is nice for single forms. But if you have to integrate the check into a (automated) company leaver process the browser option is not a practicable way. 

Copper Contributor

I moved a form from my personal forms to a Group and now we cannot access responses via the "Open in Excel" option.  How can we get the detailed data out?  When we try to open we get an error that says "sync failed and a new workbook with all responses couldn't be created.  Please try again."  Every member of the group tried and gets the same results.  I tried changing the end of the address from "false" to "true" as recommended in a different thread" but it doesn't work for us.

@bbrickey - the Excel file should be stored in the root of the doc library in the SharePoint site associated with the O365 Group. Check there. You may need to escalate to your MS Support contacts. We had an issue a couple months ago with Forms and support was (eventually) able to recover some important data.
Brass Contributor

But what about Flow? I found that I'm not able to add Flow to any Forms created from Teams and attached to a Group. So when a user creates a Form and asks for help with Flow. I must copy the Form so I'm now the "owner/originator" so I can simply add a Flow for them ... So if a Form is Moved to a Group will that break any backend Flow?

Copper Contributor

1) This doesnt seem to be an option in Forms Pro.  How do I transfer a Forms Pro Survey?

 

2) I see above you provided instructions for someone to have the email notifications go to the group.  Can it be set up/controlled to go to only those in the group who wish? Ie: they can each select or not, to receive notifications? Or can you just have one person get them? etc

 

Copper Contributor

It would be nice if we had the option to move the results folder to a different location.  Even though it is a Group Form we don't necessarily want the entire group to access the data.

 

Also, please add group to group transfer.

Copper Contributor

Does this also work in Forms Pro?  I have 3 forms in Forms Pro that do NOT have the Move feature.  I have 2 forms in Microsoft Forms that I can Move...  I need to allow ownership of these forms to others in my organization.  I have sent the Collaborate links but they are not able to see the forms in their Shared With Me...

Copper Contributor

I have the same problem.  I have a forms pro survey created in My Forms but there is not MOVE option.  I have a draft form created in Form and it has the MOVE option.  I need to move the Forms Pro survey to a team.  Some comfort in knowing its not just me.  Have tried all of the trouble shooting steps that I can find with no success.

Brass Contributor

Few Questions : 

We have a form which now is used within a MSFlow to collect the data and push to SharePoint. we need to know 

1. What happens to the Form after the creator of the Form leaves the company.

2. What is the best way to transfer the ownership of the Forms to another user without affecting the existing connection in the MS Flow.

3. Will moving the Form to the group solves the issue? Will it not break the association within the Flow where it is referenced already?

4. Is there any other easy way to just transfer the ownership?

Copper Contributor

Hi @Si Meng ,

 

Do you know the timeline for rolling out this feature to Australia?

 

Thank you.

 

Cheers,

Kyaw Kyaw Tun

Microsoft

Hi @Kyaw_Kyaw_Tun this feature has been rolled out to 100% production. If your customer has trouble using it, please refer to this help document, https://support.office.com/en-us/article/transfer-ownership-of-a-form-921a6361-a4e5-44ea-bce9-c4ed63....

If your question isn't covered in the help document, please send your questions to FormsTriage@microsoft.com. 

Copper Contributor

Hi @Si Meng,

 

Thanks for your quick response. I think there is not that feature in Forms Pro. I cannot find the button to Move. Please see my attached screen shot.

If the Forms can provide that feature, why Forms Pro can't?

 

clipboard_image_0.png

 

Cheers,

Kyaw Kyaw Tun

Microsoft

@Kyaw_Kyaw_Tun thanks for your question. This features moves a form from "My forms" to "Group forms" of the user. Forms Pro does not have Group forms, this is why you don't see the "Move" button for Pro. 

Copper Contributor

Hi @Si Meng ,

 

Thanks for your reply. So how can we share Forms Pro within the Group as we can share the Flow (Power Automate) within the O365 groups.

 

Cheers.

Kyaw Kyaw Tun

Microsoft

Hi @Kyaw_Kyaw_Tun , for questions around Forms Pro's capability, please work with Welly Lee (welee@microsoft.com) for further details. Thanks. 

Copper Contributor

Hi @Si Meng ,

 

Thank you.

 

Cheers.

Kyaw Kyaw Tun

Copper Contributor

@Si Meng I moved a personal form to the incorrect group. How can I move it from that group to the right group? I am the creator/owner of the form.

I think this is not a current feature but is it something that Microsoft is planning to launch?  

Brass Contributor

We have a similar problem with Forms. A synced user created a form. Because of some reason, we had to remove the MSOLUser (Remove-MSOLUser - force/-RemoveFromRecycleBin) and are now unable to access the Form anymore. Resync does not resolve the problem. 

 

Are there any chances get access to a Form after the user already left the company? We have the shared URL of the form (and it is still working), but we can't get access to modify the form neither to get the answers of the form.

 

Further more, where are the files/data stored? Is it Somewhere on sharepoint?

 

 

 

Microsoft

@Hinachan thank you for reaching out. Moving the form from one group to another group is not available currently, but it's something in the backlog. 

Microsoft

@_Matthias_ I'm sorry to hear the inconvenience this caused you. When was the user removed? If the user was removed within 30 days, the company's global admin could move the users form to the admin's. Please refer to this article about it - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Forms-Blog/Ownership-transfer-of-your-employees-for....

Brass Contributor

Need to transfer ownership of survey from me to an "individual".  How do I do that?

Microsoft

Hi @chudson002 this capability isn't available right now. We are sorry for the inconvenience. 

Here is a link to vote for person to person ownership transfer in UserVoice - https://aka.ms/vote-person-to-person-transfer.

Copper Contributor

I created a Form in Group Forms. When I left the Group (but not my organisation) the Form was no longer visible to anyone in that Group or anyone who had been given the link to fill out and submit the Form.

 

Solutions?

Microsoft

@BYRON_ABBOTT  sorry about your inconvenience. +@Jon_Kay to help look into this. 

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