Summary

Your form opens perfectly when you click the link, and the people you sent it to say it will not let them answer. That gap is the whole problem: the settings that block a respondent are invisible to the person who owns the form, because you are signed in and they are not. This guide works through the causes in the order they actually occur, starting with the two-minute check that catches most of them.

Symptoms

• Respondents report a message telling them the form is not accepting responses.
• The form opens for you and for colleagues, but people outside the company are refused.
• A respondent lands on a sign-in page instead of your questions.
• One person cannot submit while everyone else can.
• The form worked last week and stopped without anyone changing it.
• The link opens the form editor instead of the questions.

In this guide

• 1. Open your own link in a private window
• 2. Set the audience the form actually needs
• 3. Turn response collection back on and clear the deadline
• 4. Check both response limits
• 5. Rule out the respondent's signed-in account
• 6. Confirm the form still exists and find where it lives
• 7. Recover a form whose owner has left the organization

Before You Start

• The form's owner account, or membership of the group the form belongs to. Sign in at https://forms.office.com.
• A browser that can open a private window — Chrome, Edge, and Firefox all can. You need one to see what a respondent sees.
• No admin rights are needed for steps 1 to 6. Step 7 covers the one case that does need IT.

Instructions

1. Open your own link in a private window

The fastest way to see what your respondents hit is to open the link the way they do — signed out, in a window that knows nothing about your account.

1. Open the form at https://forms.office.com and click Collect responses in the top-right corner. The Send and collect responses panel opens.
2. Click Copy link in that panel. Take the link from here, not from your browser's address bar — the address bar shows the editing URL, which sends anyone who clicks it to a permissions wall rather than your questions.
3. Open a private window: press Ctrl + Shift + N in Chrome or Edge, or Ctrl + Shift + P in Firefox. Edge labels its window InPrivate; Chrome labels it Incognito.
4. Paste the link and press Enter. What loads now is exactly what your respondents get.
5. Note which of three things happened, then go to the matching step:
   • Your questions load and you can submit — the form is open to outsiders. The problem sits with one respondent, so go to step 5.
   • A sign-in page appears — the audience is restricted. Go to step 2.
   • A message says the form is not taking responses — collection is switched off or a deadline passed. Go to step 3.

2. Set the audience the form actually needs

The most common cause of a form that works for you and nobody else is the audience setting, which limits answers to your own organization.

1. In the Send and collect responses panel, read the dropdown at the top. It is set to one of three things:
   • Anyone can respond — anybody who has the link can answer, inside or outside your organization, with no sign-in.
   • Only people in my organization can respond — respondents must sign in with a work or school account belonging to your organization. Personal Microsoft accounts and accounts at other companies are refused.
   • Specific people in my organization can respond — only the individuals and groups you named can answer, even if someone forwards them the link.
2. Select Anyone can respond if the form goes to customers, vendors, event guests, or anyone else outside the company. Changing this is reversible and does not touch the responses you already have — but answers collected while Anyone can respond is on arrive anonymously, and switching back later does not put names on them.
3. Leave it on Only people in my organization can respond if you need to know who answered. Name recording is part of that option, which is why it demands a sign-in.
4. Click Copy link again and resend the link, so everyone is working from the current one.
5. Repeat the private-window check from step 1. Your questions load without a sign-in prompt.

3. Turn response collection back on and clear the deadline

A form stops taking answers the moment collection is switched off or its end date passes, and neither is visible while you are editing the questions.

1. Open Settings — the gear icon in the top-right corner of the form. In some versions it sits inside the three-dot More form settings menu (⋯) in that same corner. If neither is where you expect, look for any control named Settings near the top-right of the form editor.
2. Find Accept responses. When it is unchecked, the form is closed and every respondent gets the closing message instead of your questions. Check it. Reopening the form does not affect a single response you have already collected.
3. Look directly below at Start date and End date. An End date that has passed closes the form on its own — clear the date, or move it forward. Clearing a date removes the automatic close; nothing is deleted.
4. A Start date in the future has the same effect from the other direction: the form is closed until that date arrives. Clear it if you want responses now.
5. Close the settings panel and check the link in a private window again. Your questions load.

4. Check both response limits

Two different limits stop submissions: one blocks a single returning person, the other caps the whole form.

1. Return to Collect responses. Under Only people in my organization can respond, find One response per person. With this on, anyone who has already submitted is refused on a second attempt — including you, if you tested the form earlier with your own account.
2. Turn One response per person off if people genuinely need to answer more than once. Turning it off changes nothing about the responses already collected and can be switched back on at any time.
3. Click the Responses tab at the top of the form and read the response count. A work or school account form holds up to 5,000,000 responses, so hitting the ceiling is rare — but past 50,000 responses the summary charts, the individual response view, printing, and the summary link stop being available, which reads on screen as a broken form rather than a full one.
4. Check which account owns the form. A form built on a personal Microsoft account caps far lower — 200 responses on a free account, 1,000 on a paid one — and stops accepting answers when it gets there. Work and school accounts are the ones with the high ceiling.
5. If the form is full and you need the data out before starting a fresh one, How to Export and Analyze Microsoft Forms Results covers getting the responses into Excel first.

5. Rule out the respondent's signed-in account

A respondent whose browser is signed into the wrong account is refused however correct your settings are, and nothing you change on your side will fix it.

1. Ask the person to open the link in a private window — Ctrl + Shift + N in Chrome or Edge, Ctrl + Shift + P in Firefox. A private window carries none of the sign-ins their normal windows are holding.
2. When the form asks them to sign in, they enter the work or school account that belongs to your organization. A personal Microsoft account, or a work account at their own company, is refused by Only people in my organization can respond no matter how the link reached them.
3. If the questions load now, the browser's stored sign-in was the cause. Closing the private window afterwards signs them out of that window only — their usual windows, saved passwords, and other sessions are untouched.
4. If they still cannot submit, check whether they have already answered once and One response per person is on. A private window does not get past that rule, because it is tied to the account rather than the browser. Turn the setting off in step 4.

6. Confirm the form still exists and find where it lives

A form that has been deleted, or that sits in a group rather than in your own list, produces exactly the same dead link as a form that has been closed.

1. Go to https://forms.office.com and check both My forms and Shared with me. A form you built inside a Teams channel or a Microsoft 365 group is stored with that group, not in your personal list, so it will not appear under My forms at all.
2. If you cannot find it, open the Deleted forms tab. This is the Forms recycle bin, and forms stay there until somebody empties it.
3. Hover over the form's tile, select More options (⋯), then Restore. The form and every response it had come back intact, and the original link starts working again.
4. Leave anything you are unsure about sitting in Deleted forms. Deleting a form from that tab is permanent — the form and all of its responses are gone, with nothing left to restore and no version to fall back on.
5. While you are there, use Move on any important form to hand it to a Microsoft 365 group. A group-owned form survives its creator leaving the company, which is the failure step 7 exists to clean up.

7. Recover a form whose owner has left the organization

When the person who built the form has left, the form leaves with their account — and the window to get it back is 30 days.

1. Confirm this is what happened: the link works for nobody, the form appears under Shared with me for no one who is still here, and the person who created it has left the company.
2. Find out when their account was deleted, not their last working day. Those are often weeks apart, and the deletion date is the one that starts the clock. All data belonging to a deleted account is removed 30 days after that account is deleted from your organization's directory.
3. Raise the ticket today rather than at the end of the month — this needs an administrator, and the deadline does not move. Ask IT to transfer ownership of the Microsoft Form created by [the departed person's full name and work email] to [your full name and work email], and include the form's link, their last working day, and the account deletion date if you have it. That is everything an administrator needs to act without coming back to you for details.
4. Rebuild the form if the 30 days have already run out. Past that point the form and its responses cannot be recovered by anyone, including IT. How to Create and Manage a Survey with Microsoft Forms walks through building the replacement — and put this one in a group, so the next departure does not take it with them.

Troubleshooting

WARNING

Test every form the way a respondent will reach it — private window, signed out — before you send the link to anybody. A form set to Only people in my organization can respond opens flawlessly for you while refusing every outsider, and nothing in the editor tells you that is happening. Two minutes here saves a day of "it does not work for me" replies.

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
A message says the form is not accepting responses	Accept responses unchecked, or the End date has passed	Open Settings, check Accept responses, and clear or extend the End date (step 3).
Respondents hit a sign-in page and cannot get past it	Audience set to Only people in my organization can respond	Change the dropdown under Collect responses to Anyone can respond (step 2).
One person is refused while everyone else submits fine	They already answered, and One response per person is on	Turn that setting off under Collect responses, or collect their answer another way (step 4).
The link opens the editor instead of the questions	The URL was copied from the address bar while editing	Use Collect responses > Copy link and resend that link (step 1).
The form is missing from My forms entirely	Deleted, or created inside a group	Check the Deleted forms tab and select Restore, and check the group's forms (step 6).
Nobody can open the form and its creator has left	The form went with the deleted account	This needs admin access within 30 days — use the ticket wording in step 7.
Responses stopped arriving on a personal account form	Free personal accounts cap at 200 responses	Rebuild the form on your work or school account, which holds far more (step 4).

Related Articles

• How to Create and Manage a Survey with Microsoft Forms
• How to Use Branching Logic in Microsoft Forms
• How to Export and Analyze Microsoft Forms Results

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