Microsoft Forms (formerly Office Forms) is an online survey creator, part of Microsoft 365. Microsoft Forms allows users to create surveys and quizzes with automatic marking. The data can be exported to Microsoft Excel. It’s very easy to use. Microsoft Forms first came out in June 2016. The difference between a survey and a quiz is that quizzes have right and wrong answers.

You could use Forms to create, for example, a customer satisfaction survey. You might ask on a scale of 1 to 5 how you would rate the service. You might ask how likely they would recommend the company to a friend. You could have open-ended questions that allow the respondent to type an answer to a question such as ‘What did you like best about the service?’. You could have multiple choice questions. You can also add sections to your form. You can also add pictures to your forms. You can also set-up branching. What branching does is change the next question presented depending on the answer to the current question. You find the branching option at the bottom right corner of each question if you click the ellipsis. You can add a date question that asks the respondent when they used your service or visited your palace.

You can add some colour to your forms by adding a Theme. Themes are located in the top right corner.

Learning Forms with Video

There are a number of videos on YouTube that help us with learning how to use forms. As a beginner you could start with Kevin Stratvert’s video called How to use Microsoft Forms. It’s over 15 minutes.

This video is a bit more advanced. Top 25 Microsoft Forms tips and tricks for 2022. It’s by Mike Tholfsen. Its over 25 minutes.

Settings

In the top right corner there is an ellipsis (three dots) that when clicked can open the settings. You can the form on or off with the Accept responses choice in Settings. You can have a Start and End Date. You can shuffle the order of the questions. You can shuffle all of them or lock questions of your choice. If you want an email notification each time someone answers your form you can set that up. You can also customize the thank you message. By default it says “Your response was submitted”. You probably should change that and also thank the respondent.

Send

Once you got everything done and looking godd you can click the Send button. You have a link that you can use. If you send out an email to someone you can paste a link to your form. When they click it they go to your form. You could put that link in your social media site such as Facebook or Twitter. You have other options. You can generate a QR code. This way a mobile phone user can easily get to your form with a mobile phone.

Responses

You can get all of your responses by clicking on the Responses tab. You can see the number of responses and the average time it took to complete the survey. You also get the Status. You can print a summary or create a summary link. You can even download the responses into Excel.