How to Use Microsoft Forms – Easily Create Surveys, Quizzes & Polls

Do you have a Microsoft account? If you answered yes, you have access to Microsoft Forms – the free, lightweight, and easy-to-use app that lets you create forms for different purposes.

With Forms, you can design surveys, quizzes, and polls in a matter of minutes. A big plus of the app is its availability on both desktop and mobile browsers.

That means students, parents, customers, clients, and just about anyone can respond to quizzes, polls, and surveys without downloading an additional app.

To help you fully grasp how to use Microsoft Forms for surveys, quizzes, or polls, I’ll walk you through the steps for creating a Form. This sample form will evaluate the level of student’s satisfaction with their classroom activities.

Getting Started

To create a Form, you have to log in to Microsoft Forms.

1. Go to https://forms.office.com/
2. Click Sign in and enter your Microsoft account details (or create a free account)

Creating a Form

1. On the Microsoft Form’s homepage, click either the New Form or New Quiz button (we will be creating a survey Form for students, so I’ll use the New Form option).

A new, untitled form is created with two tabs: Questions and Responses. The Questions tab is selected by default. This is where you can add all the questions you want to ask, and the Responses tab shows you real-time analytics, including individual results and summaries.

• Click the Untitled form placeholder and add a new title to your form. For this example, I Will use “Student Feedback.”
• Enter a short description for your form (this is optional). You can also insert an image if you want.

With the above steps, your form should look something like this:

Adding Questions

Now that your form has a title, the next step in learning how to use Microsoft Forms is adding the survey questions.

To do that:

1. Click the + Add new button
2. Select the question type (choice, text, rating, date)

• Add as many questions as you want, selecting the most appropriate question type each time.

You can set a few different parameters for your questions, depending on the type. Here are some of the common options:

• Long answer:  This is available for text-type questions. Select this if you want respondents to enter lengthy text.
• Required: Use this option to compel respondents to answer a question.
• Multiple answers: This option allows respondents to select more than one answer.
• Restriction: This option works best for questions that require numeric answers. It limits responses to a certain range of numbers.

Adding Sections

You can separate your form into different sections, especially if you have a somewhat lengthy survey covering more than one category of questions.

To add sections:

1. Click the + Add new button
2. Click on the pull-down arrow at the right end of the question-type box
3. Select Section

• A new section is created. Add a title, description, and image like you did when you first created the form.

• Now, add as many questions as you want in the new section.

Editing, Reordering and Deleting Questions

You don’t have to worry about being very accurate during the design process. Microsoft Form is flexible and will allow you to edit and reorder your questions at any time. There is also the option to delete questions that are not relevant.

Here’s how to do each of the above:

To Edit Questions

• Simply click on the question and effective the correction.

To Change the Order of Questions

• Click on the question
• Click the Up or Down arrows to move the question up or down

To Delete Questions

• Click on the question
• Click the Delete option (the trashcan icon at the top of the question)

Note: Forms automatically save your work continuously, so you don’t have to bother about saving it.

Preview Your Form

Microsoft Forms allows you to see how your survey, quiz, or poll will look before sharing it with respondents.

To see a copy of how your finished form looks like, click the Preview menu on the top-right corner of the Forms window.

Here’s how my form will look like when I share it with my students.

Forms supports mobile devices, so anyone with a tablet or smartphone can respond to your survey, quiz, or poll as long as they have an internet connection. The form will be reformatted to fit a mobile screen, like this:

Share Your Form

What’s the point in creating a form if you can’t share it, right?

When you are satisfied with your form:

1. Click the Send menu at the top-right corner of the Forms window
2. Choose how you want to share the form, including on social media, sending through email, copying the link, embedding a code in a webpage, or using a QR code that can be scanned.

View Analytics

When people respond to questions and submit them, you can see a real-time summary of their answers on the Responses tab. Simply click the tab to view the analytics.

Working with Templates

Learning how to use Microsoft Forms without mentioning templates is incomplete, so let’s quickly look at templates.

Templates are great if you don’t want to create a form from scratch. You can simply select a predesigned form to make your work faster.

Templates are editable, meaning you can reword the questions to suit your specific purpose and also rearrange the order of the questions just as you would do with a form you created from scratch.

Some of the popular templates include:

• Even Registration
• Customer Feedback Survey
• Course Evaluation Survey
• Event Feedback Survey
• Parent Satisfaction Survey

To use and edit templates:

1. Start Microsoft Forms and select a suitable template from the homepage
2. On the Questions tab, click on the title and description to edit them if that’s what you want to do
3.  Click on each of the questions and edit them to suit your purpose
4. Use the + Add new button add a new question, and change the question type (choice, rating, text, date)
5. Use the + Add option to insert new options for multiple-choice questions
6. Click Preview at any point to see how your form looks
7. Click Send to share your form