What Microsoft Forms does and why you might use it

Microsoft Forms is a free tool built into Microsoft 365 that lets you create surveys, quizzes, and polls without writing code. You design the questions, share a link or embed it on a website, and responses go into a spreadsheet you can read. It works in your web browser — no installation needed — and integrates with Excel and Teams if you already use those.

Forms is useful if you need to gather feedback from a group, run a quick poll, or create a quiz for a class or team. The main trade-off is that Microsoft collects data about who fills out your form and how they answer — the same way it does with other Microsoft products. If you came here from the document editor comparison, this is the privacy cost you should understand before you decide whether to use it.

Key Takeaways

  • You need a Microsoft account (free or paid) to create a form, but people filling it out do not need one unless you require sign-in.
  • Microsoft stores response data on its servers and can see who answered what, even if you do not ask for names.
  • You can read responses as an Excel file and delete them from Microsoft's servers, but Microsoft keeps logs of the activity itself.
  • Forms is free, but if privacy is your priority, offline tools like LibreOffice or paper surveys give you more control over where data lives.

How to sign in and start a new form

Go to forms.office.com in any web browser and sign in with your Microsoft account. If you do not have one, you can create a free account at that same page — you only need an email address and a password. Once you are signed in, click the blue + New Form button in the top left corner.

You will land on a blank form with a title field and a description field. Type a name for your form (for example, "Customer Feedback Survey" or "Team Lunch Preferences") and add a short description if you want people to know what the form is about. Both fields are optional, but a clear title helps people understand why they are filling it out.

Adding questions and answer types

Click + Add new below the description to start adding questions. A menu will appear with different question types: Choice (multiple choice or checkboxes), Text (short answer or long paragraph), Rating (star or number scale), Date, Ranking, and Net Promoter Score. Pick the type that matches what you are asking.

For a multiple-choice question, select Choice, type your question, then type each answer option. You can add as many options as you need by clicking + Add option. If you want people to pick only one answer, leave the toggle set to Single answer. If you want them to pick multiple answers, turn on Multiple answers.

For open-ended feedback, use Text and choose whether you want a single line (short answer) or multiple lines (paragraph). For questions where order matters — like "rank these features from best to worst" — use Ranking. You can make any question required by toggling Required on, which means people cannot submit the form without answering it.

Sharing your form and controlling who can respond

Once your questions are ready, click the blue Share button in the top right. You will see options for how people can access the form. By default, Anyone with the link can respond — this means you can copy the link and send it to anyone, and they can fill it out without signing in to Microsoft.

If you want only people in your organization to respond, click the dropdown and select Only people in [your organization] can respond. This requires them to sign in with a work or school Microsoft account. You can also turn on Collect respondent name if you want to know who filled out each response, or leave it off if you want anonymous answers.

Copy the link from the Share panel and send it via email, chat, or post it on a website. You can also click QR code to generate a scannable code, or Embed to get code you can paste into a website if you know how to do that.

Viewing and downloading your responses

As people fill out your form, responses appear in real time. Click the Responses tab at the top to see a summary — charts showing how many people picked each answer, average ratings, word clouds from text answers. This view is useful for spotting patterns quickly.

To see individual responses and read them, click Open in Excel. This creates a spreadsheet in your OneDrive with one row per response and one column per question. You can then read that file to your computer, edit it, or share it with others. The data is now in a file you control, though Microsoft still has a copy on its servers.

What Microsoft collects and stores about your form

When someone fills out your form, Microsoft records: their response data, the time they submitted it, their IP address, and their device type (phone, computer, etc.). If you turned on Collect respondent name, Microsoft also stores their name or email. Even if you delete responses from your form, Microsoft keeps logs of this activity in your account history.

Microsoft uses this data to run its services — to show you your results, to detect spam or abuse, and to improve Forms itself. Microsoft can also use anonymized data (data with names removed) for its own research and product development. If your organization has a paid Microsoft 365 account, your admin may have additional controls over where data is stored and who can see it.

If you are collecting sensitive information — health data, financial details, or anything you would not want Microsoft to see — Forms is not the right tool. Consider a paper survey, a spreadsheet you keep offline, or a tool specifically designed for privacy-sensitive data.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do people need a Microsoft account to fill out my form?

Not unless you require it. By default, anyone with the link can respond without signing in. If you change the sharing setting to "Only people in [your organization]", then they need a work or school Microsoft account. You control this in the Share menu.

Can I see who answered what if I do not ask for their name?

Microsoft can see who answered what based on their IP address and device, even if you do not ask for a name. You will not see that information in your form results, but Microsoft has it. If you need truly anonymous responses, do not turn on "Collect respondent name" and do not require sign-in.

What happens if I delete my form?

The form and its responses are deleted from your Microsoft account. Microsoft may keep backups for a limited time for system recovery, but the form is no longer accessible to you or anyone else. You cannot recover it after deletion, so read your responses first if you need to keep them.

Can I edit a form after people have started filling it out?

Yes. You can add, remove, or reword questions at any time. People who have already responded will not see the changes, but new responses will reflect the updated questions. Be careful rewording questions mid-survey, because old and new responses may not line up perfectly.

Is there a limit to how many responses I can collect?

Forms does not have a hard limit on responses. However, very large surveys (thousands of responses) may slow down the summary view. Downloading to Excel and working with the file directly is faster for large datasets.