Bottom line up front: If a specific user or group creates a form, how can that ownership be transferred to another user or group?
Example: A form was created via a SharePoint Team Site. When the project was complete, we moved (via the SharePoint 'move' function) the Excel file containing the results to another Team Site. The original Site was then deleted. We expected the Form would be tied to the .xlsx, as it was with Surveys.
Result: The previous 'share' link returns an error - an expected behavior. However, all users who were members of the now-deleted Site can still see the Form via the webpage, identified as owned by the now-deleted Site - but receive an error when attempting to open it. Users of the Site where the .xlsx is currently located do not see the Form via the Form webpage. The original Excel file of results is intact, but lacks the "Forms" button to publish it as a form.
No documentation we've found mentions where a Form is actually stored, and there seems to be no way to take an existing spreadsheet and create a Form from it.
Conclusion: Either the movement of the file or deletion of the team site broke a link between the Forms service and the actual .xlsx, and that disassociation (or the deletion of the Team Site it was created under) had the effect of deleting the Form.
Questions:
a) Is there any hope for recovering the Form? Or recreating a new one from the existing results .xlsx?
b) What actions regarding the Excel file, Site, or otherwise will cause this? Would renaming the .xlsx have had equally catastrophic results? What about a user-created file that leaves the organization?
Comments:
-Corporate users want to be able to put their hands (mice) on the actual Form data, even if it's just a txt file of XML. I want to know that something my company has created is tangible and can be exported; not ambiguously floating in communal storage, with no way to access it except via a singular interface.
-The file(s) that constitute the Form cannot be (permanently) tied to their creator, and need to be fully transferrable without breaking the relationship to the .xlsx that contains the results.
