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Microsoft 365

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June 30, 2023

Am a keen follower of Microsoft's SharePoint Blog and proud to provide this direct from the Microsoft Tech Community:

To satisfy the needs of a rapidly changing digital environment, Microsoft continues to develop modern, intelligent, and integrated forms experiences for our customers. In 2014, we shared that InfoPath 2013 would be the last release version, and we shifted to more modern solutions for form building and distribution, including Power Apps, Power Automate, and Forms. In alignment with this move, in 2026 we’ll also be retiring the InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint Online. Over the next three years, we’ll assist customers making the shift to more modern solutions to ensure their businesses have even greater success.

InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint Online will be retired in 2026

InfoPath Forms Services will be removed from SharePoint Online for all tenants after July 14, 2026, to align with the extended support end date of InfoPath Client 2013 (link). This applies to all environments including Government Clouds and Department of Defense. If you’re using InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint Online, we recommend migrating to Power Apps, Power Automate, Forms, or other supported solutions. We frequently hear from customers saying that businesses have experienced even greater success with these newer technologies.

There will not be an option to extend InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint Online beyond July 14, 2026.

Overview

InfoPath Forms Service in SharePoint

InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint lets organizations deploy their forms to SharePoint sites, enabling end users to fill out these forms in a web browser. Most customers are using InfoPath for various purposes such as collecting information, connecting data from diverse sources, and automating workflow together with other solutions such as SharePoint Designer or SharePoint Workflow.

For Microsoft 365 SharePoint, InfoPath Forms Services will be removed after July 14, 2026.

For SharePoint Server 2016, SharePoint Server 2019 and SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, the extended support date for InfoPath Forms Service will end after July 14, 2026.

For scenarios where InfoPath or InfoPath Forms services are currently being used, we recommend migrating to other modern solutions such as Power Apps, Power Automate and Forms.

Power Apps provides capability of rapidly building and sharing low-code apps.

Power Automate helps increase efficiency by streamlining repetitive tasks and business processes.

Forms helps collect data effortlessly to make better decisions.

Impact on Microsoft 365 customers

The existing InfoPath scenario in Microsoft 365 involves three types of customers: admin, InfoPath designer/publisher, InfoPath respondent.

Admin: manages InfoPath settings in SharePoint admin center on how end users can use InfoPath (such as enable or disable publishing or rendering of browser-enabled form templates).

End user – Designer/Publisher: manages (including creating, modifying and publishing) templates into Sites/Lists.

End user – Respondent: fills in/responds to the forms.

After InfoPath Forms Services are removed from Microsoft 365 SharePoint, the experience change would be as follows for different types of users.

Admin:

– The entries of configuration capabilities will be removed from SharePoint admin center.

– The custom form with InfoPath option will be removed from Forms Settings from SharePoint Online.

End user – Designer/Publisher: will be disallowed.

End user – Respondents:

– If the InfoPath solution is already migrated to other solutions by the designer/admin, then end users can continue respond to the forms with most likely a new UI experience replaced by the new solution.
– If the InfoPath solution is not migrated, then end users will be disallowed to submit a new response using InfoPath service. They can download the InfoPath templates(.xsn) or collected InfoPath Forms(.xml) from SharePoint and open them using InfoPath Client 2013 to view the data if they have the file permission.

Call to action

Administrators

1. Assess the impact on your organization

To understand how InfoPath is used in your organization, you can check the Microsoft 365 Assessment tool to scan the tenant for InfoPath usage. Using the Power BI InfoPath Report generated by the scanner tool, you can:

Identify all InfoPath Forms usage in the tenant, per site collection and site.

Evaluate the recency and volume of usage of InfoPath Forms.

Understand lists, libraries and content types that use InfoPath.

2. Prepare early on a migrating plan

Below we list a few common scenarios and possible approaches to take to transit your existing InfoPath solutions to other modern solutions as some examples, and we recommend exploring Microsoft modern solutions such as Power Apps, Power Automate and Forms and pick the one or combinations that is best suitable for your scenarios.

Scenario 1: Simple information collection

If you’re using InfoPath to collect information such as survey, project request or address books, you may consider Power Apps Integration or Forms Integration.

Scenario 2: Connect data from diverse sources

If your InfoPath solutions contain data connection with multiple sources, Power Apps could be the alternative option. You can follow the instructions in Transform your InfoPath form to Power Apps for further guidance.

Scenario 3: Workflow automation

If your InfoPath is integrated with workflow automation, you can choose either Power Apps or Power Automate. More details also be found in Transform your InfoPath form to Power Apps and Migrate from classic workflows to Power Automate flows in SharePoint.

Scenario 4: Full control needed

If your InfoPath solution uses features that cannot be fulfilled with previously described options or whenever a custom code based solution is preferred, then you can choose for building a SharePoint Framework Form Customizer extension.

End users

If you’re an InfoPath solution designer/publisher, we recommend starting migration using the alternative solutions mentioned above as early as possible. If you’re the InfoPath respondents, you can continue using the existing InfoPath Forms, but we strongly recommend working with your administrators or SharePoint Site owners for the next step of plan.

Summary

We recognize that these changes may require additional work for some of our customers, and we’re ready to provide support during this transition. We are encouraged by our customer successes, and our ongoing investment in business process modernization in Microsoft 365. We’ll continue to share updates in this blog with more details.

A Message Center post in the Microsoft 365 admin center is being sent to all tenants, and we’ll update information periodically with additional details.

Thank you.

More information

Migration guidance from InfoPath to Power Apps: Transform your InfoPath form to Power Apps

Migration guidance from InfoPath to Power Automate: Migrate from classic workflows to Power Automate flows in SharePoint.

Power Apps is evaluating the opportunity to offer scalable migration programs from InfoPath to Power Apps. If you would like to learn more, fill out this interest form.