How to Allow External Users to Submit Data to Microsoft Lists (Without Paid Licenses)

Microsoft Lists and SharePoint Lists are powerful tools for tracking internal projects, assets, and requests. However, a major limitation frustrates many teams: you cannot directly share a SharePoint list with external guests or public users without granting them full access to your tenant.

Whether you need vendors to submit invoices, job candidates to fill out applications, or clients to submit support tickets, paying for extra M365 user licenses just for form submissions is unnecessary. In this post, we will demonstrate how to build an automated, no-code pipeline that allows anyone to submit data to a Microsoft List via Microsoft Forms and Power Automate!

The Problem with Direct Microsoft List Sharing

If you attempt to share a Microsoft List directly with an external user (e.g., vendor@external.com), Microsoft 365 requires them to log in via Entra ID Guest authentication. Furthermore, giving external users direct access to a SharePoint List can expose other respondents’ data unless complex item-level permissions are set up.

The Solution: Public MS Forms + Power Automate Workflow

By placing a public Microsoft Form in front of your list, you gain several major benefits:

• 100% Free & License-Free for Respondents: Anyone with the web link can submit data.
• Data Isolation & Security: Respondents cannot see existing rows or other users’ submissions.
• Automatic Data Formatting: Power Automate automatically maps Form fields directly into SharePoint List columns.

Step-by-Step Implementation Guide

Step 1: Create Your Target Microsoft List

Go to Microsoft Lists (or SharePoint) and create a list named “Vendor Applications”. Add your required columns (e.g., VendorName [Single line of text], ContactEmail [Text], ServiceType [Choice]).

Step 2: Build the Public Microsoft Form

1. Navigate to Microsoft Forms and click New Form.
2. Add questions matching your list columns.
3. Click Collect Responses in the top right, and set permissions to “Anyone can respond”.

Step 3: Create the Power Automate Flow

1. Open Power Automate > click Create > Automated cloud flow.
2. Select trigger: When a new response is submitted (Microsoft Forms).
3. Add action: Get response details.
4. Add action: Create item (SharePoint). Select your SharePoint Site and List name.
5. Map the Form fields into the corresponding SharePoint List columns.
6. Save and test your flow!

Ensuring Governance & Security Across SharePoint Automation

As you build automated data pipelines with Lists and Forms, it is critical to ensure that list permissions remain strictly controlled so that submitted data isn’t inadvertently exposed to unauthorized internal staff or guests.

For automated SharePoint Online permission reviews, auditing security groups, and maintaining clean access hygiene, check out SPClean—a dedicated PowerShell toolkit for SharePoint Online permission management.

Bonus: Provisioning Microsoft Lists via PnP PowerShell

If you need to deploy lists programmatically across multiple team sites, PnP PowerShell makes schema creation fast and repeatable:

$ClientId = "Your-client-id" # Your Entra ID App Client ID
$SiteUrl = "https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/Operations"

# Connect interactively with modern authentication
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteUrl -Interactive `
    -ClientId $ClientId

# Create a new Microsoft List
New-PnPList -Title "External Vendor Submissions" `
    -Template GenericList

# Add custom columns to the list
Add-PnPField -List "External Vendor Submissions" `
    -DisplayName "Vendor Name" -InternalName "VendorName" `
    -Type Text -AddToDefaultView

Add-PnPField -List "External Vendor Submissions" `
    -DisplayName "Contact Email" -InternalName "ContactEmail" `
    -Type Text -AddToDefaultView

Write-Host "Microsoft List successfully created!" -ForegroundColor Green

Summary & Solution Comparison

By leveraging Microsoft Forms as a frontend gateway, you can collect clean data from external users into Microsoft Lists without incurring additional licensing fees or compromising security!