Forms for Excel not available in Sharepoint

Question

Hello,

We used to have the ability to add Forms to Excel files that were saved in Sharepoint. This is important because it allows the user to share the form results with their colleagues, but more importantly, if the form owner leaves the organization, it allows the form and the spreadsheet to live on in Sharepoint. We've recently discovered that Forms with an Excel Online back-end only seems to be available for OneDrive for Business, or alternatively as a standalone worksheet that can be downloaded locally, which is not ideal.

In the 'Edit New Menu' screen, we can see the 'Form for Excel' button but when we click 'New' it not one of the options.

It seems Microsoft may have disabled this functionality unceremoniously. Which begs the question, what are users to do to ensure that a Form + Spreadsheet remain functional if the owner of the Onedrive where the spreadsheet lives leaves the organization? If you move the spreadsheet, the connection between the form and the spreadsheet seems to be lost. Needing guidance on this issue, please advise.

Answer 1

This is very frustrating. I spend alot of time educating my users to store corporate content in SharePoint and NOT OneDrive so that it can live independently of their participation in a department, project, group or company. It feels like Microsoft is undercutting that message with this. The fact that the option exists in the "New" menu but doesn't work is very confusing. If you show something as "Active" then it should be active or don't show it.

As much as I love Teams, SharePoint still has an important place in our content management approach. Not every artifact belongs in a Team and creating new Teams just to store this one artifact seems ridiculous - worse even than storing it in OneDrive. I know Microsoft wants us to move to modern group-enabled sites, but we have 1,000's of sites in our tenant. Those sites are not going away and many of them are subsites that cannot be groupified. Also, group-enabled sites do not allow for the same level of permission control as traditional SharePoint permissions.

Any idea when this will be fixed?

Answer 2

Seems to be a bug - I see the option checked too but it's not an option under "New".

Answer 3

Dear Canon Turner

Good day! Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

Based on your description, we noticed you have two concerns about your query, we'll focus on them one by one.

1. Forms with an Excel Online is available in OneDrive for Business not in SharePoint.

According to the official article mentioned: if you're created your Form in OneDrive or in Excel for web then select Open in Excel,  your Excel workbook is automatically stored in OneDrive for work or school and contains a live data connection to your form. Any new response data in your form will be reflected in your workbook.

If you worry about the Form you'll can't access after the owner leaving, you can move the files to a SharePoint document library via Move to or Copy to function and select the site library which you want to move.

2. You mentioned that In the 'Edit New Menu' screen, we can see the 'Form for Excel' button but when we click 'New' it not one of the options*.* Per our test, we can click Insert>Forms>New Form in Excel online, then it will show the +Add New option, we can click it to create the Form for this Workbook.

What do you mean that when click new, not none of the options? Can you show us the screenshot of this to us?

If this is not your scenario or any unclear, you can post back in your free time. We’re looking forward to your reply and will continue to help you all the time!

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Stacey | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 4

Hello,

Thank you for the reply, that was helpful. However, addressing this part:

"If you worry about the Form you'll can't access after the owner leaving, you can move the files to a SharePoint document library via Move to or Copy to function and select the site library which you want to move."

Please give this a try in your environment, if you move the spreadsheet that is attached to a Form from Onedrive to a Sharepoint document library, the connection if broken and when you try to view new results from the Form in Excel, you will receive the below error. This essentially makes Forms an obsolete application, as any data from these forms will not be usable once the user leaves the organization. Forms with Excel must be available again in Sharepoint Online for it to remain viable for us, and I suspect for many other organizations.

To your other question, :What do you mean that when click new, not none of the options? Can you show us the screenshot of this to us?: I was referring to a screen in Sharepoint when attempting to add a Form through Excel, as such:

It just seems like an oversight from Microsoft, when they removed this functionality from Sharepoint, they did not update their menus.

Thanks again for your reply.

Answer 5

Dear Canon Turner

Thank you for your quick response and we also appreciate you spent your precious time doing the tests and providing the detailed screenshots to us.

Per your update, for your first reply, we did a test on our end and yes, we can reproduce the same result as yours if the connection broken after moving the excel to SharePoint document library.

So, we did further search and tests, then we found that Forms for Excel is still can be available in Team site, but in Communicate site, this feature can't support for now.

In Communicate site:

In team site, we can create Forms for Excel, and it was saved in SharePoint document library:

So please kindly have a test in Team site on your end and check if you can add Forms to Excel files and then saved in SharePoint.

If you need any further assistance, please feel free to post back.

Really appreciate your patience and understanding again.

Sincerely,

Stacey | Microsoft Community Moderator