How to create a survey in Microsoft Forms and work through the answers

A Microsoft survey almost always means Microsoft Forms. It comes with the Microsoft 365 account an organisation already pays for, so it is the quickest route from a question to a link. The short answer to how one gets made: sign in at forms.office.com, select New Form, add questions with Add new, check it in Preview, then send it from Collect responses. That takes ten minutes. The parts that decide whether the survey actually works sit around those steps: which account it was built under, which settings were left on default, and what happens to each answer after it lands.

This guide covers all three. Every limit quoted below was checked against Microsoft's support pages on October 8, 2026, and the exact screen names are used so the steps can be followed with the editor open in another tab.

Check the account before writing the first question

Forms accepts three kinds of sign in: Microsoft 365 work credentials, Microsoft 365 school credentials, and a personal Microsoft account (Hotmail, Live, or Outlook.com). The editor looks the same in every case. The ceilings do not.

Source: Microsoft's support pages on form limits, sending, and collaboration, checked October 8, 2026.

The 200 line is the one that causes real damage. A browser that happens to be signed in to a personal account will build the form there without warning, and a mailing list survey or an all staff pulse passes 200 submissions quickly. Microsoft's own suggested fix once the cap is hit is to export the existing responses to Excel and then clear them from the form, which means the data ends up split across files.

A few other numbers apply to everyone. One person can hold up to 400 forms and, separately, up to 400 polls, and the form count includes anything in the recycle bin. A form can hold up to 200 questions. A Likert question counts each statement as its own question, so a ten statement Likert grid uses ten of the 200. Each answer to a single question can run to 4,000 characters, and the whole response is capped at 200,000 characters.

The fix costs nothing if it happens first: look at the account picture in the top right of forms.office.com before selecting New Form, and switch to the work or school account if it is the wrong one.

Building the form, screen by screen

Select New Form. Give it a title, which allows up to 90 characters, and a description. The form saves automatically while you work, so there is no save step.

Select Add new to add a question. The four main types appear straight away: Choice, Text, Rating, and Date. More question types opens Ranking, Likert, File upload, and Net Promoter Score. Section sits in the same place and starts a new page.

A few choices in this step make a large difference later:

• Use Choice wherever an answer can be predicted. A free text box for "department" produces "HR", "Human Resources", and "People team" for the same group, and every one of those has to be cleaned before it can be counted.
• Use sections for anything longer than one screen on a phone. Sections are also required for the progress bar, which Microsoft only shows on forms with multiple sections or pages.
• Be careful deleting questions once responses exist. Microsoft states that a deleted question is permanently removed along with any response data already collected for it.

Then select Preview. It shows how the form will look, with a computer and a mobile layout to switch between, and you can answer every question and press Submit to test the full path. Most survey links are opened on phones, so the mobile view is the one to read closely. A Likert grid with seven columns that looked tidy on a laptop becomes a sideways scroll on a phone, and that is the point where people stop answering.

Text formatting is available on titles and questions (bold, italic, underline, colour, size, numbering, bullets). Keep it to one emphasised phrase per question at most.

Branching only moves forward

Branching shows a question only when an earlier answer makes it relevant. Open the menu on a question, select More settings for question, then Add branching, and choose a destination for each answer.

Microsoft's branching guide states one rule plainly: you can only branch to a later question, never to an earlier one. Its example is a seven question form where question 4 can go to 5, 6, 7, or End of the form. Pointing question 4 back at question 2 does not create a loop. It skips questions 5 to 7 and drops the respondent at the Submit button. The response still arrives, so nothing looks wrong until someone notices that half the answers are blank.

So branching has to be planned in one direction before it is built:

1. Put screening questions first.
2. Put the branches after them, each one a section.
3. Put the questions everyone answers at the end.
4. Send disqualifying answers to End of the form instead of walking people through questions that do not apply to them.

After building, test every route in Preview, not only the main one. Each combination of answers is effectively a different survey, and the only check that all of them reach the end is to walk each one.

The settings that decide how clean the data is

Open the form, select Settings, and read every line before sending the link. Most data problems are decided here.

Who can fill out this form. Anyone can respond lets anyone with the link answer, without signing in. Only people in my organization can respond requires a work or school sign in. Specific people in my organization can respond narrows it to named people or groups: up to 100 entries in total, of which up to 20 can be groups, with up to 1,000 people per group. The two organisation options are only available on work and school accounts.

Record name. This decides whether a response carries an identity. Anonymous answers are more candid and cannot be followed up. Named answers can be replied to and will be more careful. State in the description which one applies, because respondents who cannot tell will assume the less private option.

One response per person. Worth turning on wherever counts matter. Microsoft notes that this rule is only enforced within a continuous set of 50,000 responses, so it is not a guarantee on very large collections.

Accept responses, Start date, End date. Use the dates to open and close the survey on schedule rather than relying on someone to switch the toggle off on the right afternoon. Set time duration adds a timer, after which answers are submitted automatically.

Shuffle questions. Useful for research. It cannot be used on forms with multiple sections.

Response receipts. Allow receipt of responses after submission lets respondents save or print a PDF of what they sent. Get email notification of each response emails the form owner on every submission. Automated mail is sent from [email protected] by default.

Sending it out

Select Collect responses. From there the survey can go out as a copied link (with a Shorten URL option on work and school accounts), a QR code, an embed code, or an invitation in Outlook or Teams. One invitation can reach up to 500 individual recipients, and a Teams group used as the audience is limited to 200 members.

Forwarding is the thing to plan for. Anyone who receives the link by email can pass it on. If the form is set to an organisation only option, forwarded copies still cannot be answered by outsiders. If it is set to anyone, they can, and the summary charts will never show it happened. For internal surveys, the organisation setting is the only reliable boundary.

If the form needs co-authors, open More form settings, then Collaborate or Duplicate, and create a collaborate link. Up to 100 co-authors can be added, and a group counts as one. Microsoft's note is direct: anyone with access to the collaborate link can view and edit both the questions and the response data. Collaboration is all or nothing at the form level.

Reading the answers, and the part that comes after

Select View responses. The Responses Overview shows the number of responses, the average completion time, and a chart for each question. More Details opens the answers for a single question, and Check individual results steps through respondents one by one. For a survey whose purpose is a chart in a slide, this screen is the whole job.

For deeper analysis, select Open results in Excel. On a work or school account this saves a workbook in OneDrive with a live data connection to the form, so new responses appear in it. Download a copy gives an offline workbook with no connection to the form. In both cases each response is one row, and the first five columns hold the respondent ID, start time, completion time, name, and email. Changes made in the workbook never travel back to the form.

Two limits apply at scale. Above 50,000 responses, Forms stops offering summary charts, individual response view, printing, and summary links, and the data is exported as CSV instead.

The larger gap is not about scale. Forms records what each person submitted. It has no field on a response for who is handling it, and no status such as new, contacted, or done. For a satisfaction survey that does not matter. For an application form, an event registration that needs confirming, or an enquiry form, it is the main problem, because every row is a person waiting for a reply. Teams in that position usually add "owner" and "status" columns to the workbook and keep them up to date by hand. Replies get written in Outlook, and the only record that a reply went out sits in one person's sent items.

That is the point where a different kind of tool earns its place: a form tool that keeps an owner, a stage, and the reply history on each response, so the person answering and the status are visible next to the answers themselves.

Deciding what each form is for

Sort existing forms by what happens the day after they close.

Forms that end in a number. Staff pulses, training feedback, quick polls, event preferences. Microsoft Forms already does this well. It is included in the subscription, it holds up to five million responses on a work account, and the summary screen produces the charts without an export.

Forms that end in a reply to each person. Job and programme applications, course sign ups, customer enquiries, registrations with a confirmation step. Collecting the answers is the easy half here. What matters is whether each response can be assigned, moved through stages, and answered from the same place, so that two colleagues do not reply to the same person and nobody is missed. Typical examples of this second group follow the same pattern across organisations.

Most teams find the second pile is small but generates most of the manual work.

What to change first

Check which account your most important Microsoft survey lives under, because the 200 response cap on a free personal account is the one problem here that loses answers rather than time. Then take the forms that end in a reply instead of a chart, and give each response an owner and a status, either as a maintained column in Excel or in a tool such as Halict that keeps the submission and the reply on one screen.

Q1. How many responses can a Microsoft Forms survey collect?

It depends on the account that built the form. Work and school accounts allow up to 5,000,000 responses per form, and GCC High and DoD tenants allow up to 50,000. A personal Microsoft account allows 200 on the free tier and 1,000 on a paid one.

Q2. Is Microsoft Forms free to use for surveys?

Yes. It is included with Microsoft 365 work and school plans, and anyone with a free personal Microsoft account can also use it. The free personal route is capped at 200 responses per form and does not offer the organisation only response settings or co-authoring.

Q3. Why does Microsoft Forms branching skip questions?

Branching only works forward. If an answer points to an earlier question, Forms skips everything after the branch point and takes the respondent to the end of the form. Reorder the questions so every route runs in one direction, then test each route in Preview.

Q4. Does the Excel file update when new responses arrive?

It depends on which option you choose. Open results in Excel, on a work or school account, creates a workbook in OneDrive with a live data connection, so new responses appear. Download a copy creates an offline workbook that does not update.

Q5. Can a Microsoft Forms survey show who answered?

Only if names are recorded. When the form requires a work or school sign in and Record name is on, the export includes each respondent's name and email. If the form accepts anonymous responses, those columns are empty.

Q6. Can several people manage the responses to one form?

Up to 100 co-authors can be added with a collaborate link, and each of them can view and edit both the questions and the response data. There is no built in way to assign individual responses to individual people, so teams that need that usually track it in a separate column or another tool.