Transfer a Microsoft Form to another owner

Short answer: only an office application administrator can transfer a form from an owner who has left. The owner's account must be deleted or disabled, and the form moves with the Move command, ideally into a group. Microsoft's admin page says the account must be handled "within 30 days of when an account was deleted."

What has to be true first

Microsoft's Forms admin page lists the requirements for moving the form of someone who has left:

You are the office application administrator of the organization and have a valid Forms license.
The person's account has been deleted or disabled.
The form is transferred within 30 days of when an account was deleted.

One difference matters for planning. Microsoft says: "There is no time restriction to transfer ownership of a form from an account that has been disabled (and not deleted)." So a disabled account gives you time. A deleted account starts a 30 day clock.

The steps for an administrator

Confirm you hold the office application administrator role and a Forms license.
Find the email address of the person who left. Their Object ID also works if the email does not.
In your browser address bar, replace the address with this one, and put the real email where the brackets are: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/delegatepage.aspx?originalowner=[email address]
You now see the former owner's forms. Open the form you want to move.
Select More form actions, then select Move.
Pick the destination. Microsoft says that to give the form to a current employee, you can move it to a group they belong to.
If you are not in that group, join it first. Microsoft says you must join it to perform the transfer, and you can leave the group when the transfer is done.

Exact names may differ on your screen.

Why a group is the better destination

Microsoft says that when a form moves to a group, everyone in the group becomes an owner. It also says a group can't transfer a form to another group, so pick the right group the first time. Our advice, not a Microsoft rule: pick a group with at least two people who will stay, and name it for the team, not for a person.

What the three error messages mean

Microsoft's page gives a table. Each message starts with "We can't access this page".

"The form's owner still has an active account." The owner still has an active Forms license and account, so the admin route does not apply yet.
"Make sure you've entered the email address correctly and the forms owner account wasn't deleted more than 30 days ago." The email is misspelled, or the account was deleted more than 30 days ago.
"Make sure you've entered the email address correctly, and then try again." The email is missing or misspelled.

When the account is hard deleted

Microsoft draws a line here. If the account was hard deleted from the tenant, "a global admin or office application admin won't be able to transfer the forms that were owned by that account." Those forms are also not recoverable, per the same page. An administrator can check this in Microsoft Graph with a query on deleted items. If the account shows up there, it is soft deleted and still inside the 30 day window.

What happens to the data

Owner's license removed or account disabled: Microsoft says there is no change for the amount of data stored.
Account deleted from Microsoft Entra ID: Microsoft says all account-related data is deleted 30 days after the user has been deleted.

A known problem with Defender for Cloud Apps

Microsoft lists one known broken case if your tenant uses Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps: form ownership transfer from user to group on the delegate page can leave the user blocked from access. If your transfer stalls and you run Defender, tell your security admin.

Before the next person leaves

Our advice, not a Microsoft rule: add an offboarding line to your exit checklist: list every form the person owns, and move each one into a team group before the account is disabled. While the person is still here, they can do it themselves: on the form's tile, select More options, then Move, then the group. Microsoft says only the owner can move a form, and they must be a member of that group. Microsoft also says the old form link stops working once the owner's account is hard deleted, so share the group form's link from then on. See "Employee offboarding checklist in SharePoint".

For where responses end up, see "Send Microsoft Forms responses to a SharePoint list".

When to get help

You can build all of this yourself in Microsoft 365. If you would rather have it built and tested for your team, I do that. A tracker like this is a fixed price: $5,000 for one, built in 2 weeks. See "What a SharePoint tracker costs to build". Bring one example of the problem to a free call.

Tell me what's still manual

I am Al Davies. I run 250 High Street LLC and build SharePoint trackers and Power Automate flows for operations teams. I work remotely. The first call is free, and I will not try to sell you anything.

See trackers I built: Tools I built

FAQ

Can I transfer a Microsoft Form to another user?

Not to a single person. A current owner can move their own form to a group, and everyone in the group becomes an owner. For a person who left, only an office application administrator can move it, usually to a group the new person belongs to.

How do I transfer Microsoft Forms ownership to a group?

Open the former owner's form through the admin link, select More form actions, select Move, and choose the group.

How long do I have to transfer a form after an account is deleted?

Microsoft says 30 days from deletion. A disabled account has no time limit.

Can I recover a form from a hard deleted account?

No. Microsoft says those forms are not recoverable and cannot be transferred.

Why does the transfer page say the owner still has an active account?

The person's Forms license and account are still active, so the admin transfer route does not apply yet.