Stop automatic highlighting when Microsoft Forms data downloads to Excel

Question

Students in my community college use Microsoft Forms to request appointments with us. The form collects intake data that allows us to assign students to counselors. We are experiencing an issue with Excel Online, which is where the students' responses flow into. Each member of the team has an assigned color that they highlight a row with to notify the rest of the team that they are working on something. The issue itself appears when we receive a new response to the form and the most recent previous response is highlighted in a color to be worked on by a member of the team. Excel Online automatically highlights the newest response in that individual's color for some reason and we can't seem to make it stop. Please advise.

Answer 1

Hello! Peralta Community College District

As per checking the information shared, you are having trouble with Excel highlighting whenever there's a new response received in the Excel Online. Let's work together on this, in any case if we need further assistance, we will let you know.

To stop automatic highlighting when Microsoft Forms data downloads to Excel, you can try the following steps:

1. Open the Excel Online sheet where the form responses are being collected.
2. Click on the "Home" tab in the ribbon.
3. Click on "Conditional Formatting" in the "Styles" group.
4. Select "Manage Rules" from the drop-down menu.
5. Look for any rules that may be causing the automatic highlighting and delete them.
6. If there are no rules causing the issue, try selecting the entire sheet and removing any existing formatting by clicking on "Clear Rules" in the "Conditional Formatting" drop-down menu.

If the issue persists, you may want to try downloading the form responses to a desktop version of Excel and see if the same issue occurs. If it does not, it may be an issue with Excel Online.

I hope this helps you with your concern.

Vince

Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 2

Hello Peralta Community College District,

We haven't heard from you, so we assume that your issue has already been addressed. We will not be monitoring this thread moving forward so, if you need further assistance, please create a new thread to discuss these concerns by clicking this link: Create a new question (microsoft.com)

Thank you for understanding.

Regards,

Vince