We introduced Microsoft 365 Forms in a previous blog a while ago.  It's improved since then, so if you use Microsoft 365 you should really take a look!  It has a great range of functionality and competes with the best of the stand alone survey applications, which sometimes make specific features only available in paid subscriptions.

Over the last year there have been a number of additional features rolled out.  Here we list our pick of the most useful ones to check out for your small charity or community group.

Present live

Enables you to capture responses to a Form or Quiz in a live setting (similar to Mentimeter).  Create your Form and then look for the Present option in the top right hand corner.  It will switch to the live view of your Form, displaying a QR code or link for people to access.  Once people start submitting answers, these will show dynamically in real time in the same live view. 

PowerPoint add on

Enables you to add a Form to a particular slide in a presentation.  Go to Insert and select Forms and choose whether you want to create a new Form or select from a list of your existing Forms.  Then choose whether you want to present your Form live (as above) or enable people to complete the Form asynchronously and without results showing for everyone. 

Save & Edit responses

Enables respondents to Save their responses and potentially Edit afterwards. The Save option should be set by default in all Forms now.  Go to the 3 dots in the top right corner when setting up your Form and select Settings to check if this is enabled.  You can disable this feature by unticking here if you'd prefer.  You'll also see you can choose whether or not you'd like respondents to be able to additionally Edit their responses after original submission - think carefully if this would be useful for each Form you use.

Please note - if respondents already have a M365 account, they will see their Form in a new tab in the Forms app called Filled Forms.  If respondents don't already have an account and want to Edit later, they will be prompted to set up an account linked to an existing email or can set up an outlook.com account.

Data sync to Excel

Enables you to access all your form responses in Excel for the web with automatic syncing of new responses in real-time in the one spreadsheet.  This means you're no longer having to regularly download and juggle multiple copies of Excel files with response data only up to that point in time. 

Please note - you may have already been using the Forms to Excel function in Teams which similarly creates a spreadsheet acessible by everyone in that Team, with data sync functionality.

Import Google Forms

Enables you to migrate previously set up forms and their associated response data from Google Forms. See further instructions on how to do this via the Microsoft Admin Centre.

Import from file

Enables you to import a set of questions you may have been working on e.g. in Word with colleagues.  Look for the Quick Import option alongside the create New Form or Quiz buttons in your Forms 

In addition to these new features, you'll start to notice Forms AI tips popping up offering assistance to help you create well designed forms.