forms delete all responses

[Omar]

It would be great to have an action that when triggered deletes a response or possibly all responses. Due to GDPR having data saved both in Forms and in SharePoint (if the form data is copied into SharePoint) is not ideal and there is currently no way to automate the deletion of the responses from within Flow. I know all of the responses within a form can be deleted from within the Forms action menu so having something similiar as an action within Flow would be great.

[v-yamao-msft]

Hi @Omar,

Are you working with SharePoint forms? Do you want to delete the items in the forms using Microsoft Flow?

If yes, I am afraid that currently there is no available action can be used. Please consider submitting a request on Flow Ideas Forum:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas

Best regards,

Mabel Mao

[GabrielStJohn]

Hello, @Omar!

If you have already posted your idea to the Flow Community Ideas Forum then you need to post the URL to your idea’s thread as a reply to this thread and then "Accept as Solution" on that reply so other users may vote for your Flow Idea and identify the information easily.

Thank You!

-Gabriel
Flow Community Manager

[Omar · Accepted solution]

Thank you, posted as a suggestion to https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Flow-action-to-delete-all-MS-Form-responses/idi-p/131...

[MayureshT]

Hi All,

Did anyone find how to deleted Microsoft Forms responses from excel using flow? 

[GrahamKelly]

@MayureshT try this, Delete Excel Rows X Amount of Days Old - Power Platform Community (microsoft.com).

[WendyOx]

This is not solved! The suggestion is just a request to Voice Ideas ... unmark as solved!

[ewfefwef]

Use Send HTTP Request to SharePoint Connector in Power Automate.

You need your TenantID, UserID and FormID(s).

See Azure Active Director or Powershell to get Tenant and UserIDs. The form URL shows the ID.

My flow deletes all responses from many forms each night.

I created a simple array FormID with Name & ID of all the forms. You could easily use a MS List or excel or whatever source you want to maintain for Form Name/IDs.

Loop the array and delete all responses.

You Parse the JSON (your array) inside the loop to be able to use the ID string variable in the HTTP connector. Makes it easy to read and understand the flow, I just prefer to an expression.

[Someone69]

Holy mother of all it does work your way !

the difference is i change

the Users/[Uservariable] for Groups/[GroupVariable]

using the sharepoint http request allows you to authenticate

[clh]

The Send HTTP request solution has one problem, as mentioned in this Reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerPlatform/comments/111amhf/how_to_use_power_automate_to_delete_response...

It deletes ALL current responses in the form.

If the form gets used heavily where there's a high likelihood of multiple users submitting responses close together, or happens to submit something at the exact moment the flow runs to delete all responses, then some responses will get missed.

I discovered a way to delete THIS response, i.e., the specific individual response that's being handled by the current run instance of the Automate flow so that it doesn't impact other responses.  That is to add the Response Id in parentheses after the /responses part of the Uri.

To get the Response Id, use the trigger "When a new response is submitted" and Response Id is an output from that trigger.

[apacey]

this did work until now, it returns with BadRequest 400 

{

  "status": 400,

  "message": "Unexpected response from the service\r\nclientRequestId: c9e203aa-61ee-4be6-9452-8041ab1dba8b",

  "error": {

    "message": "Unexpected response from the service"

  },

  "source": "sharepointonline-cc.azconn-cc-002.p.azurewebsites.net"

}

[clh]

Still works for me.

[mrswain]

I just wanted to follow (for future documentation purposes) that the API is picky, I got the above error when I used double quotes around the form_id, changing to using single quotes and the call works.

[demzem]

HI @clh as a newbie, i am trying to get this to work - but i simply have add to list steps, then the http request to delete the matching ID in the form. Using the raw ID's added into the api string for tenant, user and form with ('xxxx') wrapper, should this work> i get the error mentioned above

[clh]

You'll need to provide more details about what you're trying to do, maybe a screen shot of your flow.  I don't understand what you're asking.

[ptstockley]

Hi @apacey ,

Did you find a solution to make your flow work?

I tried a variety of different symbols before and after the FormID part of the Uri, but no luck:

1. Parentheses:

/formapi/api/@{variables('TenantID')}/users/@{variables('UserID')}/forms(@{variables('FormID')})/responses

2. Parentheses and single quote:

/formapi/api/@{variables('TenantID')}/users/@{variables('UserID')}/forms('@{variables('FormID')}')/responses

3. Parentheses and double quote symbols:

/formapi/api/@{variables('TenantID')}/users/@{variables('UserID')}/forms("@{variables('FormID')}")/responses

4. No additional symbols:

/formapi/api/@{variables('TenantID')}/users/@{variables('UserID')}/forms@{variables('FormID')}/responses

5. slash between "forms" and the formID:

/formapi/api/@{variables('TenantID')}/users/@{variables('UserID')}/forms/@{variables('FormID')}/responses

6. Slash and parentheses and single quite marks:

/formapi/api/@{variables('TenantID')}/users/@{variables('UserID')}/forms/('@{variables('FormID')}')/responses

[demzem]

Hi @ptstockley 
I did fix this yes! I saw that the error related to authentication, so stripped it back and rebuilt it as the below.. works like a dream!

I need to go back and tidy the flow as i no longer need tenant id or user id variables... I like removing each form entry by ID with each iteration of the entire flow, just remove (Response ID) from the below to delete all.

/formapi/api/forms('⁠FormID×⁠')/responses(⁠Response Id×⁠)

[ptstockley]

Thank you for this! 🙂

In testing I think I noticed that the account running the flow, must have editing access to the form in order for the flow to succeed.

Perhaps this is obvious (to avoid deleting responses from non-owners), but i haven't seen it explicitly stated.

[clh]

I'm still not sure I entirely understand what these last few posts are trying to do but if you're hard coding the values instead of using variables, then it would look like this...

If...

• tenantId = abc123-def456
• userId = xyz789-ghf789
• formId= qwerty345-mnop987
• ResponseId = 7

then you get this for the Uri...

formapi/api/abc123-def456/users/xyz789-ghf789/forms('qwerty345-mnop987')/responses(7)

I.e., ...

• tenantId, userId, and formId are just plain strings.
• tentantId and userId are NOT surrounded by any quotes within the Uri (either single or double).
• formId IS surrounded by SINGLE quotes (apostrophes) and the parenthesis in the Uri.
• ResponseId is a numeric value and, again, is NOT surrounded by any quotes, just within parentheses.  But to really make this work you'll need to use the output of the trigger and I don't see why this would ever be hard coded anyway.

If you want to delete ALL responses, as the original post in this thread indicated, simply remove the parenthesis and ResponseId from the end.  I.e., ...

formapi/api/abc123/users/xyz789/forms('qwerty456')/responses

I guess one thing I didn't mention in my original post about deleting individual responses was where to actually get the ResponseId from.  Use the "When a new response is submitted" trigger and the ResponseId is an output from that trigger.  I've edited my previous post to include this.

And yes, the account that runs the flow must have permissions to the form.  That's true of ANYTHING in Power Automate, so yes, it's obvious and shouldn't need to be stated.  (E.g., a flow can't work with a SharePoint list if the account running the flow doesn't have access to the SharePoint list.)  In most cases, people are likely running the flow from the same account that hosts the form.  If the flow is running in a different account, then yes, that account must be granted permissions to the form.

[demzem]

Hi @clh for the reply, so the problem was that the tenant id and user id caused errors.
So basically I removed them and it now works brilliantly! 🙂
Not sure why they would be needed in some environments and not others , but I guess we will find out when they stop working 😞