Pre-fill Responses in Your Microsoft Forms

I created a form with a choice question 'Internal use only, please do not change values' that offered choices of 'View reference' or Submit form'. 

'View reference' branched to the pre-populated field that i didn't want respondents changing, and 'submit form' was the default option.

but it doesn't work 😞 I can't find a way to hide the fields that I've prepopulated.

Definitely the need to have hidden input parameters for the respondent is very necessary. So far I haven't found a way to do it.

TakuyaHirose That is a shame, I tried it as well and had the same outcome.

I also tried another way by presenting the 'hidden' question first, generating the pre-filled URL and then pushing it back to the bottom again, but after checking the submitted answers the field is blank so the form obviously doesn't submit any question that wasn't presented.

AzureNube 

Thanks for presenting that idea. I tried it out right away. For some of the questions, I created Yes/No answer choices. Then, after that, I added an open-ended question asking for a "Course Name." The intention was to pre-fill something like "Introduction to IT" in that field, without showing it to the respondent when presenting the form.

First, I set up the branching logic so that either Yes/No choice would skip to the end of the form. When I tried retrieving the pre-filled URL, the last question wasn't displayed on the input screen. So it doesn't seem possible to pre-populate that string beforehand. Since the branching is set to skip that question regardless of the Yes/No selection, there doesn't seem to be a way to embed a response into that hidden question field.

TakuyaHirose I haven't tried it myself, but you could have those prefilled answers to be hidden somewhere at the end of the form, and then use branching on the previous step to skip over them. They wouldn't be presented to the submitter, although I don't know if the form will still record these answers if they're not ever shown. Worth a try.

Super good development in the right and long overdue direction.

Please create the possibility of caching. This makes it possible to leave the link in place and fill it in continuously until it is marked as "completed" by the individual users.

Thank you very much for the continuous development!!!

There is an issue with cookies for this.

Instead of retaining the URL, the page re-directs you to the form original URL and seemingly uses cookies to retain the answers.

This is not working when having multiple pre-filled URLs, the form remembers the first pre-filled responses even if you click on a different link.

Also, the branching is not working. If you prefill a response that has a section, you see a submit button and you can submit a half completed submission with no respect for mandatory fields that would usually be present.

Very good functionality but 2 major bugs.

This is a really nice move towards missing functionality and I'm looking forward to implementing.

However, the character limit is still 256, which is not an issue with the initial URL link, but if I try to ad any dynamic input the character limit sets back in and causes a value error. The form id takes up literally half the character limit and the question ids are so long that '&[question id]&' takes up 35 characters. Only 2 or 3 dynamic inputs can be used before breaching the 256 limit. 

This is really preventing the pre-filled link form being utilised effectively within hyperlink functions in excel etc.

Finally going in the right direction, but:

- why I can't save pre-filled form and use it another time?

- when client sends corrected pre-filled form, why I can't use it as another pre-filled form? Like an every year survey for clients, where they can see their last years answers?

Tnx

junyuB 

For a starting point, I think it's a great idea.

However, to make it even more useful, I feel there are still some missing functionalities.

Specifically, what I think is needed is the ability to hide pre-filled question items from the respondent. In other words, since you can create multiple URLs with different pre-filled values/responses for one or more question items from a single Form, and send them to the appropriate respondents, there may be cases where you don't want the respondents themselves to be able to change or edit the responses for those items.

And, if a question item is not meant to be answered or edited, there's no need to show that item to the respondent at all.