Making Microsoft Forms publicly available

Forms and questionnaires can give you valuable data, so you want to make sure enough people fill them out to make that data statistically significant. Microsoft Forms makes your forms publicly available by default, so you can collect more responses from a broader base.

If you have an Office 365 Education or a Microsoft 365 Apps for Business subscription, you can control who can access and respond to your forms. You can create a form tailored to a specific audience, such as a particular team within your company. This ensures that you only receive responses from your desired audience, keeping your form response data accurate and relevant.

But if you want to reach a wider audience and make the form publicly accessible so everyone can respond, this is easy to do in Microsoft Forms. Here’s how you do it:

1. Sign in to Microsoft Forms.
2. Open the form you want to make public or create a new form.
3. Click Collect Responses (under the Questions tab if you are on the mobile site).
4. Find the Send and Collect Responses pane.
5. Open the drop-down list under Send and Collect Responses and choose the respondents you want to provide access and response options to.

Depending on the subscription you have, you may see the option to choose from three response options:

• Anyone can respond: Any recipient of the form inside or outside your organization can submit a response. This option makes the form public and is the default setting for basic Microsoft subscriptions.
• Only people in my organization can respond: This option allows only people within your organization who have a Microsoft Office work or school account to respond. It limits the audience, but it is ideal if you want to keep the form within your company or organization.
• Specific people in my organization can respond: You can choose who can respond within your organization and you can enter their specific email addresses.

If you want to make the form public, anyone with any e-mail address can respond. For the “Only people in my organization can respond” and “Specific people in my organization can respond” options, you must have Office 365 Education or Microsoft 365 Apps for Business.

Sharing your Microsoft form

Once you have decided who can respond to your form, you need to decide how to share that form and collect responses. You can share Microsoft forms with a link or QR code, embed the form in a Web page or send the form via e-mail.

Use a link or QR code

If you use a link or QR code to share your form, you can insert the link or QR code file into an email, a website or even on a sign or document that your audience will see.

To share the form via a link, click Collect Responses and then click the link icon. A text box displays a web address unique to your form. Copy that address to use on your Web site, in an e-mail or in another location.

To use a QR code to share the form, click the QR code icon and then click the Download button. A PNG file of your QR code is downloaded to your device and you can insert that code into a document or other material. Your audience can scan the QR code on a mobile device to access your form quickly and easily.

Embed your form

To embed your form in a Web site, click the Embed icon. A text box displays a code unique to your form. Copy that code and then paste it into a web page to embed the form directly into the site.

When you embed a form, your audience can open and fill out the form directly on your website. They are not redirected to another site, which can increase the likelihood that your audience will take the time to fill out the form.

Send your form via email

To share your form via e-mail, click the E-mail icon. That button will prompt your e-mail application to open. From there, you can add the e-mail addresses of those you want to receive the form, or you can decide to send the form to entire groups in your e-mail contacts. You can add a custom e-mail message to introduce the form and your audience will receive a link to the form directly in their Inbox.

Using email to share your form ensures that your target audience receives it. You don’t have to worry about reaching them through other outlets, such as your website or social media pages.

source: jotform