Forms stopped syncing with excel.

Question

I have a form set up to sync with a one drive excel file. It has been working great for months.

It just stopped syncing 2 days ago. Nothing has changed...

The error I get when I open the excel file is: Open from FormsThis form is linked to a different workbook. Go to Forms to open the linked workbook. (preview)

I got this message after accessing the workbook from the form.

I searched these "community" and don't see any actual answers just others having the exact same problem.

I went through office support and was told my only option was to post a blind message to a message board and hope someone gets back to me with an answer. The support didn't even know what Microsoft forms was. They thought it was a google form.

Answer 1

I am not anticipating a fix on this - it was an intentional decision by Microsoft.

To continue to use your Excel workbook that was synced to the Form, you can:

• Go to the Form and go through the process of syncing responses to a new workbook (breaks sync to original workbook)
• Create a Power Automate Flow to update the original Excel workbook

In this scenario, the old workbook with historical responses remains the workbook you actively use and is updated when the Form is submitted via Power Automate while the new workbook that is now synced to the Form is essentially a dummy - you can sync it by opening it if you want to see raw responses.

Alternatively, use your existing spreadsheet as a template for SharePoint/MS Lists - you should be able to upload historical data with the template as well. You can then use Power Automate to update the SharePoint List.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Same issues. Very sad that this thing is not solved for so long. Our business processes are built upon forms + power automate and now we have to redo everything.

Answer 3

This just happened yesterday and is the second time I ran into this problem. Creating a whole new excel file isn't exactly a fix, since it keeps happening.

While I'm looking to see if one of our other users somehow broke the link by modifying the excel file, and did realized one thing that happened , which shouldnt have broke the link, but possible. The only thing different from the previous day when it worked fine is I had to change my work password which automatically changes my Microsoft 365 work account password as well.

Answer 4

This just randomly starting happening to me as well. I did go through the process of syncing to a new spreadsheet - one record pushed through after that, but now I have three more that did not. Furthermore, the web version of the spreadsheet has the sync function that runs periodically and it is saying the two are synced - which they obviously are not.

Answer 5

I can only confirm the same behaviour!

I need to open my worksheet on Excel and then the Excel is synchronising! My power automate cloud flow is just not working anymore...

Any answer from Microsoft about this annoying issue ??