Microsoft Forms lacks the ability to ask questions about time, and one user has been on a fruitless 7-year quest to get it added

What you need to know

• Microsoft Forms lacks the ability to ask a question about time by using a template.
• The app supports adding questions for a date, but not a time.
• Microsoft claimed the feature was placed on its backlog to add to Microsoft Forms back in 2016, but it has still not been added.

Microsoft Forms is a nice little tool for collecting answers and information from people, but it lacks a feature that should have shipped ages ago. One man, or rather one legend, is on a quest to get support for time added to Microsoft Teams.

Over seven years ago, William Mattison asked about adding a question for the time of day to Microsoft Forms. Microsoft said that it placed the feature in its backlog of things to add. It must have been way in the back, as the feature is still not available.

The Register recalled the harrowing tale of one brave man trying to get Microsoft to add a simple feature to Forms. Google Forms already has the ability to ask about time. Right now, Microsoft Forms only has the ability to ask people about a preferred date. While you’d think adding a similar option for time would be simple, it has apparently proven difficult.

“Had I known 6 and a half years ago that getting time added to a Microsoft Form would become a life-long odyssey I might have chosen to pursue something more ambitious. Thank you all for joining me on the pilgrimage,” said Mattison in an update earlier this year.

“This blog post is becoming one of my greatest accomplishments in its absurdity. I’ve grown quite proud of it. It does make we wonder what else has been added to the Microsoft “backlog”…game system to replace the XBox One? Changing the color of the Blue Screen of Death? Still it’s heartwarming to know I was such a visionary, so far ahead of my “time”.”

Microsoft has gone through several leadership changes since the initial request in 2016. The senior project manager has since moved on to work on Microsoft Teams. A new senior project manager followed up on Mattison’s request in 2021, but no action has been taken.

This situation is peculiar because Microsoft appears keen to add the feature but has not done so in seven years. If the company had simply said it was not interested in adding the feature, some may have been upset but no one would have been surprised that it was not added. Instead, Mattison must continue on his noble quest to figure out what time works for everyone through Microsoft Forms.