What's New in Microsoft Forms | January 2021
Published Jan 13 2021 08:50 AM 35.7K Views
Microsoft

Entering 2021, Microsoft Forms’ new features aim to streamline your experience of accessing, creating, and distributing forms. From text formatting, specific user sharing, and creating polls for form creators, to response downloads and immersive reader for form respondents, read on to learn about our latest updates.

Text Formatting in Forms

Bold, Italicize, or Underline Form TitleBold, Italicize, or Underline Form Title

Soon, you can bold, italicize, or underline words in Forms, allowing you to create forms that emphasize and differentiate content with hierarchy. When composing any text content in your form, you can format the text via the floating tool bar that appears when you highlight the text. Or, format your text using the known keyboard shortcuts: control/command + B/I/U.

 

With a quick click or shortcut, you can highlight or lowlight information without leaving the current interface. Starting rollout soon, this feature will be generally available by late January.

Bold, Italicize, or Underline Form Questions and Answer ChoicesBold, Italicize, or Underline Form Questions and Answer Choices

 

Specific User Sharing for Response Collection

With this feature, you can determine who within your organization is allowed to respond to a form or quiz you have created. Under the “Share” button, you can select “Specific people in my organization can respond” from the drop-down menu to activate this feature. Then, you can specify the particular individuals or groups by entering the individual or group email addresses.

Specific People Can Respond - DesktopSpecific People Can Respond - Desktop

 

This experience is just as intuitive on mobile, whether you are using the Office app or your mobile web browser. After tapping the paper airplane icon to share your phone, you will find the option to limit your respondent pool with “Specific people in my organization can respond.”

Specific People Can Respond - MobileSpecific People Can Respond - Mobile

 

Download or Print Your Form Response

Soon, you can enable form respondents—both internal and external to your organization—to save or print a copy of their answers to your form or quiz. To enable this feature, head to “Settings” at the top right corner of your forms page, and select “Allow receipt of responses after submission.”

 

After completing the form, respondents will have the option to save or print a PDF of the form with their filled-in answers on the “Thank You” page. This feature is rolling out and will reach all users by the end of this month.

Option to Print or Download Answers on Thank You pageOption to Print or Download Answers on Thank You page

 

Please note that selecting this setting still allows form respondents who are internal to your organization to ask for an email receipt of their form. For more information on this specific functionality, which was available since last January, please see our previous blog post.

 

New Forms Start Page Experience

If you have used Forms recently on either your desktop or mobile browser, you may have noticed that you land on a newly designed start page on Office.com. Whether you already access Forms from your sidebar on Office.com already, or you always visited forms.microsoft.com directly, you will experience this new interface as someone with an Enterprise, Business, Education, or Personal account.

Office.com Forms Start PageOffice.com Forms Start Page

Office.com Start Page - Mobile BrowserOffice.com Start Page - Mobile Browser

Right away, you can find your recently used forms. You can pin any of your forms for quick access under the “Pinned” tab. Under “Shared with me,” you’ll find all forms that have been shared with you as a collaborator. When you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can access group forms under the Microsoft 365 of which you are a part. Then, right above group forms, you can go to “All My Forms” to view a larger list of your forms. From there, you can find your deleted forms, as well as Copy, Move, and Delete any of your forms.

Move, Copy or Delete Forms under "All My Forms"Move, Copy or Delete Forms under "All My Forms"

 

Immersive Reader in Forms for Anonymous Users

Last year, we enabled immersive reader for students who are logged in to their Microsoft accounts to improve the readability and accessibility of Microsoft Forms on both desktop and mobile. Recently, we made Immersive Reader available to any respondents filling out a form, whether you are logged in to your Microsoft account or not. Simply click the “…” near the top of the form to enable Immersive Reader.

Immersive Reader in Forms for All RespondentsImmersive Reader in Forms for All Respondents

 

Increased Capacity for Polls in Other Microsoft 365 Apps

With Polls in Teams Meetings becoming available in late November, we wanted to help you leverage polls not just in meetings, but across Outlook, PowerPoint Live Presentations, and Teams chat and channels too. Now, you have additional capacity to use polls in other apps: an additional 200 beyond the current 200-form limit. In other words, polls you create starting in January 2021 will count towards the new limit of 200; however, polls made before the end of December are still counted in the original 200-form limit.

 

We hope you explore and use these latest updates. If you have additional questions on Forms surveys, quizzes, or polls, please visit our Support page. You can also watch @Mike Tholfsen's video on the Top 25 Tips for Microsoft Forms to strengthen your Forms' skills.

 

To provide feedback, please visit our Forms UserVoice site.* You can also join discussions in the Microsoft Forms Tech Community and follow the Forms Blog to stay updated in the future.

 

*Note: Microsoft will be moving away from UserVoice feedback sites on a product-by-product basis throughout the 2021 calendar year. Read more about this change here. To send your feedback for Microsoft Forms, please go to the upper right corner of your form design page and select the three dots ... > Feedback.

52 Comments

Great enhancements to Forms!

Copper Contributor

I like most of the changes but the new Start Page is awful. As an educator, I need to see my forms and be able to browse them, search in them. This new step is a step backwards and has put off me and my team from using more forms in our teaching and training. When will Forms become easy to manage and organise? So far, so bad. 

Copper Contributor

Unless I'm missing something, it looks like there's no way to copy or move old forms between groups.  The options are there for newly created forms, but for existing forms (prior to the 'upgrades') the options are:

Sherry_Amelse_0-1610579965399.png

 

This is a huge problem and I hope that either I'm wrong or it gets fixed.

@Sherry_Amelse  You can Copy/Move if you go to the "All My Forms" page (the link in the lower right under the Recent Forms display).

 

There's a feedback button on Forms home. I encourage you to use that to provide feedback on this feature (and others).

Copper Contributor

And as usual the most important thing is forgotten, making folders to itemise the forms.

 

Putting the option (Are you sure you want to delete i.e. response...

 

Putting the Delete option the second, not the first.

 

Directly send to pdf and group claases...for teachers.

 

Making the search into the Responses more easy by arranging the names...

 

Allow the title number of words to be more flexible... not just a few words

 

Allow the options for the inseted pictures...

 

And more

Steel Contributor

Thank you for continuing to develop Forms. Not much of a game changer in this set of updates, though. 

Steel Contributor

Thays great and finally formatting. Your uservoice for forms is practically being ignored with not enoigh interaction/ feedback from Microsoft. 

 

Certain features like the file upload for anonymous form is still not fixed. 

 

People have been wanting a way to better organise forms without using search for even longer. 

 

Please also fix the use of links in text to have both a display name and the underlying link.  

 

I have always been a big supporter of this part of the Microsoft 365 family, 

I just want to see those common complaints fixed and to stop my people rushing off to purchase third party products because of it. As this leads to sprawl / potential loss of data. 

Thanks. 

Copper Contributor

Hi all,

These are all good adds and updates in my view....

 

- We do need to have the ability to pass data into forms through URLs this has been requested for a while and over 3000 people have supported this since a few years back and still it is not here.

 

Jay

Copper Contributor

Forms traffic still locked to US region? Or nah? Adding other features before this is resolved is pointless for many global users.

Copper Contributor

I greatly dislike the new landing page. This change has made it so much harder for me to find the forms I'm looking for. I can no longer search for my forms! It would be extremely useful to have the ability to organize my forms as well (as mentioned by others). In addition, Forms still needs an admin tool for visibility of forms to our enterprise admins. 

Copper Contributor

The ability to easily search for previously created forms has gone! Why?

 

Are you going to increase the 200

form limit? As an educator, 200 is not a practical limit to work within. 

Please introduce a way to categorize forms and allow us to create some kind of folder.

Copper Contributor

The new landing page is awful, why do I have to go to a next level (all forms) to see the option to copy a form. Where are my Group Forms? How do I see a form that is in a group but not showing on my landing page?  It's more fragmented and not intuitive at all. 

 

Microsoft

@EileenStan , you need to scroll all the way down the page to find all your groups and group forms.

Copper Contributor

Bonjour,

 

Dans l'export des résultats en fichier Excel, comment paramétrer les éléments relatifs au nombre de points, ainsi que le nombre de colonne

J'ai de nombreuses colonnes qui s'incrémentent dans mon export, mais dont je n'ai pas besoin ou dont les résultats sont "vides".

 

Merci par avance pour votre aide.

 

Sourianne_LECANU_0-1611707612827.png

Sourianne_LECANU_1-1611707687293.png

 

Copper Contributor

I sent this through feedback already, but an organization system is in dire need. There also needs to be an option to attach images to each Multiple Choice answer. Google Forms has this option already.

Copper Contributor

بوركت جهودكم المميزة 

Copper Contributor

Hi everybody,

 

I was so concern about 4 quizzes created last year, and I checked them in my FORMS account yesterday,  but unexplainable  I have not could find out today. I spent more than two hours searching but it has been impossible. PLZ help me!!! I send you both evidence. I do not know how to do. Thank you.Screenshot 2021-02-09 at 11.59.40 AM.pngScreenshot 2021-02-08 at 8.06.01 PM.png 

Copper Contributor

I am trying to see if you can create poll questions in the Forms App ahead of time and then access them from Teams as needed?

Copper Contributor

I do appreciate the recent addition of a search field being added to the forms page. This has improved my experience, but I do still prefer the way it was prior to the UI update. 

Copper Contributor

Need the trash can back to permanently remove delete forms... ASAP please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Copper Contributor

Teachers have spent several hours each trying to figure out why they cannot add quizzes previously created in a given team to that same team through assignments. They are also frustrated that they cannot add older quizzes created before the recent changes.

Forms already has some serious drawbacks (like the inability to verify if a student has accessed a quiz unless they submit it--not great for minimizing cheating), the inability to organize into folders, the recent loss of a search feature, and now the inability to add an older quiz to a Teams assignment?

Copper Contributor

Correction: I said above that you cannot search. It seems that searches can still be done.

Copper Contributor

When will these new features be live? I don't see them in my version of Forms and all systems are up to date.

Copper Contributor

First, I encounter Forms a very useful tool for us, teachers. But...

I'm sorry, the new landing page is worse than in previous versions. I really dislike since older versions that we are limited to some nice options within all the forms created by us. To say it in short, it is a mess, we need you to give us the ability to organize our forms within the Teams' groups. Also, we highly need to be able to copy and paste at a higher level of usefulness.

I really hope the MS listen to our concerns seriously.

Copper Contributor

Hi @Melinda_Hu 

 

Thanks for this info .. checking on my tenant (and another too) I seem to have all the new features that you mentioned on your post except the Text Formatting? That's actually the one thing really keen to have!

 

If my tenant has these new features shouldn't it have all of them? Or is there a delay/issue with the new Text Formatting?

 

Thanks Derek

Steel Contributor

Progress is being made for Central Deployment of Add-in

Good News / Bad News

Good News:         The Add-in is now available in AppSource Central Deployment if you Search Forms you will see the PowerPoint Add-in

 

Bad News:         When I Get, add to Everyone and try to Accept Permission for the tenant and use my signed in ID as Global Admin,  I get an error message "Accept permissions failed"

So Close

Copper Contributor

Wann gibt es die Möglichkeit beim Quiz anstelle von Linked Fragen auch ein Muliple-Choice Raster, wie in google forms, die eine automatische Bepunktung ermöglicht?

Steel Contributor

This Forms Add-in for PowerPoint was finally successfully deployed in my Tenant. YAY !!!:hearteyes:

Copper Contributor

Still no roll-outs on my end to edit the text. My main issue is I was tasked with integrating multiple forms into a single, dynamic form that we then would connect to SharePoint. I created this form almost in its entirety, 200+ entries (which is surprisingly above the norm for most users to get)- I had in-depth branching going on all over the place and suppose somehow this increased the limit/threshold for entries. Regardless, this form is now rendered useless and is self-deconstructing. An entire section is unable to be edit as I somehow have crashed the site. 

If somehow all my work could not get thrown out the window (leaving my searching for other options i.e. google forms) and this software could allow limitles entries/length forms this software would be the go-to for its simplicity and ease-of-access. 
However, because Microsoft insists on restricting this as a light-weight platform myself, and many others, have work that is stuck in limbo.


These updates sound great but it is now the middle of March and I have none of them. Just make the software's entries limitless, editable (text), add restrictions to dates, and we're golden! :\

Copper Contributor

Text Formatting in Forms

When will this update be available?

@Francois_Roux  I believe it is in all tenants now.

Copper Contributor

Francois_Roux_0-1615923618844.png

 Nothing on my side.

Copper Contributor

Can't seem to save my form with branches. Any help? It keeps reformatting when I share it. 

Copper Contributor

reinstalled Office 365 (org account w/ school district) and still no ability to format text in forms.  Is there a version # or something I can check against to verify?

Copper Contributor

Where is all this improvement. I'm working right now with a Form, but can't see them!

Copper Contributor

Still no rollouts

Copper Contributor

I've begun using google forms since I can create longer/branched forms there. Not compatible with power automate.

I am wondering if anyone knows a solution to printing problems with forms branching.
I've looked everywhere for answers: When printing a form that has multiple sections, I do not want to print the entire form and waste 20+ sheets of paper on unfilled entries. Searched stack overflow, google, GitHub etc. and this seems to be a problem that only I have discovered?

Printing a form is necessary to our registration process when doing check-list type analysis. Why have branching at all if it doesn't apply to branching. I understand that is a bit dramatic but there has to be some solution besides adjusting the printing pages (doesn't work either as some pages contain diff. sub-sections)


Also, I continue to reference back to see if text editing is possible yet. There isn't...

Copper Contributor

There's still no sign of Text Formatting in the three different Tenants I manage - has anyone actually seen this live yet?

 

@Melinda_Hu  - can you comment at all on roll-out of this as original post from you?

 

Thanks, 

 

Derek

It is available in our tenant

Steel Contributor

@DerekPapworth It is in my tenant.  Not sure exactly when it was applied but it was between 10-Mar-21 and 22-Mar-21.  FYI,  It took a few seconds for the pop up to appear after you have highlighted the text. I tested using the Chromium based Edge Version 91.0.825.0 (Official build) dev (64-bit) but it also works with Edge Version 89.0.774.57 (Official build) (64-bit)

 
 
 
 
Copper Contributor

Hi @Melinda_Hu 

 

Thanks for the updates above, The new formatting options sound great, also the Immersive Reader update is great for accessibility, I have a question you might be able to answer.

 

Context:

I use vignettes in one part of my form where text will be displayed to the respondent and they need to answer 2 questions based on the displayed text.

 

Issue:

The issue is the vignette has 4 different versions (each one is slightly different as per the research design) and I am wondering if it is possible to randomize which version of the 4 vignettes a respondent will receive when they complete the survey (where each participant only sees 1 vignette and the system changes the version for each respondent)?  I know shuffle exists, but this appears to only change the order of the questions. 

 

Thanks.

cp

Silver Contributor

For people who only create a few forms it wouldn't be an issue, but for those of us with tens of forms or in my case well over 100 we desperately need to be able to organise them into folders. But this is still not even on the roadmap.

 

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User

Copper Contributor

I absolutely agree. I have many, many forms, and it has become very difficult for me to find what I'm looking for without a lot of searching. Forms could also use an admin console like Flow, so that we admins can see forms across our organization. 

Copper Contributor

Where is the problem of the formatting function, that some tenants see it and others still are not able to use it?

Maybe a question of licensing?

 

Copper Contributor

please let the upload documents function in forms be shared to external users.

Brass Contributor

We desperately need Version History capabilities in Microsoft Forms. We are using it for compliance for ISO 9000 2015 and there is no way to see who revised the form and at what time. 

Copper Contributor

I am still waiting for a time and phone field in the forms.

Copper Contributor

Question how do you add text if you have multiple choice for a survey 

 

Ex. 

1.) Provider ( Needs to have text)

2.) Medical conditions ( Needs to have text)

3.) Site (Needs to have text)

 

Silver Contributor

@tujck it is not currently possible to add text to a multi choice question.  Personally I wouldn't do it as multiple choice but have Text questions for each one.

 

Rob
Los Gallardos
Intranet, SharePoint and Power Platform Manager (and classic 1967 Morris Traveller driver)

 

 

Copper Contributor

Does anyone know how to set out a survey like this? It looks a lot better than adding the same response options time and time again. Thanks! Tim 

 

teejayess_0-1655801927330.png

 

 

 

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‎Aug 03 2023 03:44 PM
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