Shared Microsoft form capturing to Excel spreadsheet

The issue:

Microsoft Forms seems like an appropriate place to start working with forms, but, by default, anything you create using this method will reside in your personal OneDrive directory, which might cause problems with sharing and ownership when you leave the university and your MS365 account is closed. This article describes an alternative method in Microsoft Teams that provides team ownership of the resources and resilience against staff changes.

The solution:

1. Select or create a channel (or private channel) for your functional group, within your Microsoft Team, and make sure all of your group members have access to the channel;
   
2. In the channel, click on the Files tab, then click on the + New button, and select Forms for Excel, and enter a title for your form;
   
3. Microsoft Forms will launch in a browser window - go ahead and design your questions;
4. Click on the '...' menu at the top right, and select Settings;
5. Choose the correct level of accessibility and if you'd like the form to be 'live' as soon as it's ready, ensure the Accept Responses box is ticked. At any point (e.g. after a deadline has passed) you can until that box to prevent further submissions;
6. Tick the Get email notification of each response option so that all channel members will receive alerts;
7. Click on Collect responses, and choose the accessibility level (again!), and then tick the Shorten URL box and copy the URL;
8. Test your form by opening a new browser window and pasting the URL into the address bar. If you answer your form questions here, then you'll be able to see how responses will look in your spreadsheet;
9. Go back to Teams and click on the spreadsheet that should now be visible under the Files tab
10. If you wish to remove any of the columns, you can do so by right-clicking (or CTRL-clicking) on the column header;
11. To return to the form, if necessary, click on the Insert tab in the spreadsheet, then Forms > Edit form;
12. Once you're happy with the form design and have confirmed that the spreadsheet is receiving responses, you can publish the form URL for people to use.