# Microsoft Forms

> Bring form responses from Microsoft Forms into Dimension Labs with an export and a file upload.

This brings in your Microsoft Forms responses: each text question and the respondent's answer, one conversation per response. Microsoft doesn't document a public API for reading form responses, so the route is a file: open the responses in Excel, convert the workbook, and upload it.

## What you need

- Owner access to the form, or edit access to a group form.
- A Dimension Labs source under **Unstructured data** for the file. See [Upload a file](/data/upload-a-file).

For new responses as they arrive, you can also use Power Automate: Microsoft's Forms connector has a **When a new response is submitted** trigger and a **Get response details** action, so a flow can post each new response to the universal API. It works only with work or school accounts, and it doesn't fire for responses that already exist, so load history with the export below. See [Power Automate](/integrations/power-automate).

## 1. Export from Microsoft Forms

Microsoft's steps are in [Check and share your form results](https://support.microsoft.com/office/check-and-share-your-form-results-02859424-341d-406f-b32a-9a0fbaf357af).

1. Open the form and select **View responses**.
2. In **Responses Overview**, select the drop-down arrow next to **Open results in Excel**, and choose **Download a copy**. You get an `.xlsx` file of every response so far.
3. Keep it as `.xlsx`. Don't resave it as CSV from Excel, which can rewrite long IDs and dates.

The workbook's first five columns are the respondent ID, the start and completion times, and the respondent's name and email address. Every column after that is one question, with the question as its header. A form that accepts anonymous responses leaves the name and email empty.

**Open results in Excel** without the drop-down saves a workbook to OneDrive for work or school (SharePoint for a group form) with a live connection to the form, so new responses appear in it. **Download a copy** has no connection to the form: export a fresh copy each time.

## 2. Map the columns

Give the `.xlsx` file to the [converter](/data/convert-a-file), which reads the first sheet of an Excel file directly. Choose **One survey respondent per row** and select the open-text question columns: each response becomes one conversation, with each question as an outgoing message and each answer as an incoming one. For the dates, pick the time zone the times are in.

| Dimension Labs field | Microsoft Forms column | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `sessionId` | respondent ID (the first column) | Unique per response. |
| `conversationId` | respondent ID | Same value as `sessionId`. |
| `userId` | respondent ID | Don't use the name or email columns. |
| `dimensionlabs_timestamp` | completion time | The converter spaces the messages of one response a second apart. |
| `text` | each open-text question column | The header is the question (outgoing), the cell the answer (incoming). |
| Extra columns | rating or score question columns | Tick them to keep them as metadata you can filter on. |

Drop the name and email columns before you upload. Open-text answers can hold personal data too: see [PII redaction](/data/pii-redaction). Check the converted file with the [file checker](/data/check-a-file) before you upload it.

## 3. Upload and backfill

[Upload the file](/data/upload-a-file) to your source, then start a [backfill](/dimensions/backfill) from the **Backfill** tab: an uploaded file is treated as history.

To keep it current, download a new copy each month and upload it to the same source. The new file repeats the responses you already sent; that is safe, because duplicates are removed when a file is ingested. Save the converter's mapping the first time and load it each month.

## Microsoft Forms reference

- [Check and share your form results](https://support.microsoft.com/office/check-and-share-your-form-results-02859424-341d-406f-b32a-9a0fbaf357af) (Open results in Excel, workbook layout)
- [View results of your form](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-results-of-your-form-22ea518c-b2f6-4824-bf8d-f14a6bba7d3c)
- [Microsoft Forms connector](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/microsoftforms/) (Power Automate and Logic Apps triggers, actions and limits)
- [Microsoft Forms documentation](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-forms/)

Checked against Microsoft's documentation on 2026-10-26.