Forms can't set multiple answer's limit

[danvy617]

When I created a survey in Forms, some questions are required to have multiple answers.

But there is no limit to control the participator to choose certain answers.

For example: One question have 10 answers, and don't want participator to select more than 5 answers, if someone selects 5 answers then no other answers are allowed to be selected.

I check the Forms setting with multiple answers, but not find such function.

Does Forms support such function?

Or am I missing something in Forms?

[#2]

@danvy617 this is not currently possible with Microsoft Forms, but there is a uservoice request for it which you can vote for here.

Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User

[#3]

Many thanks for your info.
Voted.

[#4]

This seems like a really basic capability to not be available. The only workaround I am finding is to use ranking (but ranking questions have a limit on how many options you can present).

Which makes sense because there's a logical limit on how many items someone CAN mentally rank but in our case we have more than 10 options to present, so TOP 3 / TOP 5 is the only question type that will work.

And (SIGH).... MS Forms doesn't support it????

[#5]

Hi @danvy617 

It's a little clunky, but you can simulate this function by copying the question X number of times. For example, if you want the top 3 choices, you would create 3 copies of the question and simply change the wording of each question: What is your FIRST choice? What is your SECOND choice? What is your THIRD choice? 

You can use sections and/or branching to control how the questions are displayed to reduce confusion. 

However, just copying the question creates the possibility for people to choose the same response 3 times, which can skew the data. If that is a concern (and you're very ambitious), you can prevent it and give the illusion of a responsive question by creating different copies of the question for each possible response and editing the prompt to reference that response. For example, if the first question is:

Which of these is your first choice?

1. answer 1
2. answer 2
3. answer 3
4. answer 4

You could create 4 copies for the 2nd question:

You selected "answer 1" as your first choice. Which of the remaining is your SECOND choice?

1. answer 2
2. answer 3
3. answer 4

AND

You selected "answer 2" as your first choice. Which of the remaining is your SECOND choice? 

1. answer 1
2. answer 3
3. answer 4

Etc. 

This is, obviously, a lot of work and it complicates the data analysis a bit, but it improves the user experience and simulates the dynamic content options available with more powerful tools. Clearly the best solution would be for Microsoft to either add the option to limit the number of options selected OR to enable dynamic references to previous responses. Hopefully the fact that these options are both available for free with direct competitors will encourage them to follow suit soon.