Get access to free tutorials, exclusive content and more.

Need a PDF Copy of any WordPress Form Submission?

/ December 18, 2019

Wish there was an easy way to send or export a PDF copy of a WordPress form submission?

There's 2 quick and easy ways to send WordPress form submissions as a formatted PDF document. It can even include company info in the header with a logo if desired. Here's how.

You’ve probably tried lots of different ways to share your WordPress form submissions with the people that need them. Email is a great way to share, but doesn’t serve well as an official, portable document. Letting just anyone log in to see the submissions themselves is probably off the table for user privacy reasons. You can always export the submission as a csv, but that lacks the ‘official document’ quality the same as an email.

There’s 2 quick and easy ways to send WordPress form submissions as a formatted PDF document. It can even include company info in the header and even a logo if desired. Here’s how.

Email a PDF copy of the form submission to anyone that needs it

Need a PDF copy of the form submission to go out to the form submitter, yourself, or someone within your organization? It’s really simple to have a PDF copy of the form sent to anyone that needs it. This does require the PDF Form Submission add-on, but it’s literally as easy as flipping a toggle to on once it’s installed.

From any form you’ve created, go to the Emails & Actions tab and look at the Settings for Email Notifications.

You should be see an option under the Advanced settings that reads Attach PDF. Toggle this on, save your work, and the data collected by that form is good ready to be exported.

Publish and preview you work. I would also recommend submitting a test form just to make sure everything was constructed correctly.

Export any form submission as a PDF

This also requires the PDF Form Submission add-on, but again is just one step to accomplish after you have it installed and activated.

Once your form is set up and tested, from your Dashboard go to Ninja Forms and Submissions.

 

From the drop down menu select the form you need and from the build list you will see the option Export to PDF. Click this and you are good to go!

Bonus: Take advantage of PDF Form Submissions new customization features!

The PDF Form Submission add-on was recently updated to be much more customizable than it has been in the past. It now includes features for customizing document title, header, and footer. You can even upload a logo to the header. Look for more customization features for the document body in the future as well!

Keep Your Work Fast and Professional with PDF Form Submission

Keeping up with your data and making sure it’s always within easy access shouldn’t take hours of your work of a clunky disorganized filing system. The PDF Form Submission add-on can turn hours of organization and formatting into a few simple clicks. While your looking at Ninja Forms, be sure to check out our membership plans to find the best deal and get the most bang for your buck!

Are you looking for another feature or method to convert form data? Make sure to share that with us in the comments below so we can know how to best help you!

About the Author

James McCluskey
James McCluskey

James is an English teacher and content writer for WP Ninjas. His daily motivation is to constantly look for something new to learn. This has tragically turned him into a living encyclopedia of largely pointless information. When not teaching, writing, or learning, James is usually working with his wife, Megan, on fundraising and support for several nonprofit organizations. Excelsior!

Recent Posts from James McCluskey

See more posts

Categories:   Document & Submission Management,  Form Submission Export & Sharing,  Send & Customize Email Notifications

Tags:  

Comments

  1. walker mcgraw says:

    Ability to Customize CSV export would be nice!
    Global Switch: Exclude any field marked as Personally Identifiable Data
    Field Level Switch: On= exclude this value from being reported (i.e. don’t share client email)
    Suggestions: Make CSV file nameable
    Suggestion: if field excluded, value delivered is a NULL , this would keep the column structure intact
    Suggestion: ADD Unique form submission ID, this would allow submission data to be sent out as “blind-ed” data and yet master copy still intact.

  2. Vins says:

    Just wow, didn’t know there’s a way to have a form submission converted straight to a pdf file. I definitely need this, I have tried a bunch of contact forms for WordPress and all of them didn’t have this feature.

  3. Art Gager says:

    I would love it if the pdf looked more like the webpage form.
    We spend a lot of time crafting the online form with multiple items on each line and then it comes out in the pdf like a table that is often pages long. Our users find it harder to use a print copy.
    Thank you, Art

  4. Lyndon Loweth says:

    It’s great that the form can output as a PDF but the resulting PDF doesn’t look very professional. Is there any way to get the PDF to look like the online form?

    Also, is there any way that the PDF or CSV can be named as per one of the fields so that they can be separately identified?
    Thanks, L

  5. Steven says:

    Is there a way to customize the pdf? in submissions and in email & actions?

    • Kathy Zant says:

      Hi Steven, there are a quite a few ways to customize the PDF within the PDF Form Submission add-on. You can customize the document name, title, headers, footers, and content.

  6. Ram says:

    Hi, In PDF footer , when I use the merge tags (like form fields, other fields) in Additional information, the generated PDF is displaying just the merge tags instead of values. Is there any problem in my usage of footer in PDF or bugs in PDF generator?

    {field:name_1628770645169} Online form :{form:id}: {submission:sequence} Count :
    {submission:count

    • Lenka Uhliarova says:

      Hello,
      at this moment there is not a way to add a page break in the PDF. I have added this as a feature request for the PDF plugin.

  8. Victoria says:

    Recently purchased this. I see that there was a mention of the merge tag in the footer issue, which seems to still be an issue. It would be awesome to see that repaired.

    Despite this minor hiccough of the merge tags showing the variable and not the value in the footer (as mentioned here previously), I really LOVE this plugin. I was able to do so much more with the PDF than I expected.

    I would request one feature to be added in the future. I would like to be able to either display or link to the created PDF from the confirmation/thank you page to allow for a client to download or print immediately. If this already exists, I do not see it.

    Thanks for this, it is a sanity saver.

Comments are closed.