How to create survey with Microsoft Forms

Depending on your business, sometimes you may need to conduct a survey to interact with customers, promote something new, or measure customer satisfaction to improve a specific product or service, and this is when Microsoft Forms comes in handy.

Microsoft Forms is a freemium service that makes it easy to create a survey with multiple-choice, text, rating, Likert, and net promoter score questions that you can invite others to respond to collect feedback from anywhere using any web browser or mobile device. The service also offers real-time results, analytics to review responses, and more.

You will need a Microsoft 365 or business subscription to access the premium features, but the free version includes all the basic tools to create a form of this type.

In this guide, you’ll learn the steps to create a survey form to collect feedback from people using Microsoft Forms. In addition, we also look at the steps to review the participant’s responses.

• How to create survey from scratch with Microsoft Forms
• How to create survey from template with Microsoft Forms
• How to review survey responses with Microsoft Forms

How to create survey from scratch with Microsoft Forms

To create a custom survey to request feedback, use these steps: 

1. Open Microsoft Forms online.

2. Sign in with your Microsoft account (if applicable).

3. Click the New From button.

   

4. Click on Untitled form and write a title and description for the form.

   

5. (Optional) Click the Image button to insert an image for form using Bing, OneDrive, or manual upload.

6. Click the Add new button.

7. Select the type answer you want to get from users completing the survey. Options available, include:

   • Choice – adds a multiple-choice question.
   • Text – adds a question that requires a written answer.
   • Rating – adds a question requesting a rating, and you can use stars or numbers for symbols.
   • Date – adds a question requesting a specific date. 
   • Ranking – adds a question requesting to sort the answers by ranking. 
   • Likert – adds a question that holds 5 to 7 options with choices ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree.
   • Net Promoter Score – adds a question to measure customer experience by requesting users to offer a scale from 0 to 10 on something (usually recommendation). 

8. Customize the question and answer as necessary.

   

9. Repeat steps No. 7 and 8 to add more questions to the form.

10. (Optional) Click the down-arrow button, while in the “add new” question menu, and select the Section option to separate the content.

11. Click the Theme button in the top-right corner to select a background image and color scheme for the form.

    Quick tip: You can also use the Upload image option at the end of the list to insert a custom background image.

    

12. Click the Preview button in the top-right corner to review the complete survey before publishing.

13. Click the back button in the top-left corner.

14. Click the More form settings (ellipsis) button in the top-right corner and select the Settings option.

    

15. Select the options for the form: 

    • Accept responses.
    • Start date.
    • End date.
    • Email notification of each response.
    • Customize thank you message.
    Quick note: The free version of Forms or the one available with Microsoft 365 Personal or Family does not include the “Who can fill out this form” setting to record participants names. You will need a business subscription to access this and other options.

    

16. Click the Send button.

    

17. Select the link option.

18. Click the Copy button.

Once you complete the steps, you can paste and send the link to anyone to collect responses via email or social network. In addition, to copy the shareable link, you can get a quick response code that recipients scan with their phones to access the form. Also, there is an embed option to copy a code to embed on a web page, or you can even select the email option, which simply copies the link to the clipboard and opens the default email client to compose a message to send the survey.

Alternatively, Microsoft Forms also offers a choice in the Settings menu to print the survey, instead of creating a link, if you prefer getting a hard copy of the survey responses.

If you want to delete a form, while in Microsoft Forms, click the “All my forms” option from the bottom-right side, and then click the ellipsis menu button in the form and select the Delete option.

How to create survey from template with Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms also offers templates of surveys and another type of forms you can customize to quickly create and publish the form you need.

To create a survey form with a template, use these steps:

1. Open Microsoft Forms online.

2. Sign in with your Microsoft account (if applicable).

3. Click the More templates button.

4. Select one of the available templates. For example, Customer feedback survey.

   Quick tip: If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription you can even more templates.

   

5. Click on the form default title and write a custom title and description.

   

6. (Optional) Click the Image button to insert an image for form using Bing, OneDrive, or manual upload.

7. Review and edit each question, as necessary.

   Quick note: Selecting the question, you can edit, reposition, or remove the question as necessary.

   

8. (Optional) Click the Add new button to create more survey questions.

9. Click the Theme button in the top-right corner to select a background image and color scheme for the survey. 

   

10. Click the Preview button in the top-right corner to review the complete survey before publishing.

11. Click the back button in the top-left corner.

12. Click the More form settings (ellipsis) button in the top-right corner and select the Settings option.

13. Select the options for the form: 

    • Accept responses.
    • Start date.
    • End date.
    • Email notification of each response.
    • Customize thank you message.

    

14. Click the Send button.

    

15. Select the link option.

16. Click the Copy button.

After you complete the steps, you can send the link to anyone you wish to collect their feedback. 

How to review survey responses with Microsoft Forms

Once you published the survey, you can check the responses from within the form.

To view survey responses on Microsoft Forms, use these steps:

1. Open Microsoft Forms online.

2. Sign in with your Microsoft account (if applicable).

3. Click on the survey you started.

   

4. Click the Responses tab.

   

5. Confirm the number of people that sent their responses to the survey and average time that took to complete the questionnaire.

6. Review the answers of the survey. 

7. Click the View results button.

   

8. Review the answers for each submission.

Once you complete the steps, you will have a better understanding of the participants, and you can use that data to improve the products or services you are providing.

We are focusing this guide to create and publish a survey form, but Microsoft Forms also allows you to create quizzes and polls.