This month we will be introducing you 4 tips on Microsoft forms to help you create quality forms especially when collecting large amount of data. 

What is Microsoft Forms?

Microsoft Forms is one of the applications in the Office365 suite and you can create online surveys, polls, or quizzes easily. After creating the form you can share it via an URL link or a QR code. Respondents are able to access to the form shared on different devices as well. Response data will be visualized instantly on Microsoft Forms, but you can also export the data to your local device for further analysis. 

How to Access to Microsoft Forms?

To access to Microsoft Forms, it is very easy. 

1. Launch your browser, then insert [forms.microsoft.com] on the search bar. 

2. This is your Microsoft Forms interface. To create a new form, click [New Form].

3. Insert your form title and description.

4 Microsoft Forms Tips to Enhance your Online Forms

Feature #1  – Text Formatting Options

1. You can easily format your text on the description bar by using the formatting toolbar. 

2. . First, highlight the text, then a formatting toolbar will show up and you can format your text accordingly.

3. You can also use keyboard shortcut keys to format your text after highlighting them.

Bold: CTRL + B

Underline: CTRL +U

Italics: CTRL +I

4. Moreover, you can change text color or make the items into a bullet point list.

This feature allows you to highlight main points from your description box and catch your respondents’ attention.

Feature #2 – Shorten Sharing URL

1. To share the form to the public when it is completed, simply click the [Share] button on the top right corner. A link will be generated. However, as you can see, the link is quite long and sometimes may give an unprofessional look.

2. You can shorten the URL by checking the [Shorten URL] box underneath the sharing URL. Then, click [Copy] to copy the link to your clipboard.

3. When you paste the link elsewhere, the link is significantly shortened and makes it easier to share.

Feature #3 – Question Suggestion

1. To insert questions to your form, one of the ways is to click [Add New], then choose your question type, and then insert your question. 

2. You can build your form from scratch using this method, but it can get repetitive and tedious. You can cli the [Question Suggestion] button to display a list of suggested questions to your form.

3. You can determine the question and answer type by the icons on the right. For example, they could be short text, a rating scale, or multiple choice questions. 

4. Select the questions that would fit the form you are preparing and click [Add Selected]. 

5. The questions are now inserted to the form, and to edit the questions, click on the question and make your changes.

6. The added suggested questions can act as a template when designing the form, as you can design the framework first and then make further editing to the questions – which saves you a lot of time.

Feature #4 : Multilingual Form

You can add additional languages to your form to take care of respondents who speak different languages. Previously you needed to prepare different sets of forms to be shared to different groups of users.

1. First, click […] on the top right corner, then click [Multilingual].

2. You can see that your primary language of the form is English, and to add an additional language, click [Add Additional Language] and insert the language on the search bar. I will be choosing Traditional Chinese this time.

3. Once added, click the pencil icon next to it.

4. Translate the content of your form into the corresponding language, just like so. When you are finished, click [Back] to go back.

5. Let’s see what the respondents will see when they receive the form by clicking [Preview]. With this feature, users will see a drop down menu on the form and choose the form language of their choice.