Want to analyze your WordPress form entries easily? See our guide on how to export your Ninja Forms to an Excel spreadsheet. Don’t have time to do the weekly or monthly exports? You can actually set your Excel spreadsheet to update itself every time there’s a new submission in your WordPress form!
This article will show you how.
How to set up the connection between your WordPress form and Excel
In just 3 simple steps, you won’t need to do any WordPress form export anymore. Your Excel spreadsheet will update itself every time there’s a new submission.
All you have to do is establish the link and information flows over with every form submission!
First, make sure you have a spreadsheet saved in your OneDrive, with headers for each column that you want to populate with your WordPress form data.
Other things you’ll need to follow this guide:
- Ninja Forms Zapier add-on
- a Zapier account
- a Microsoft account
1. Set up the Zapier add-on and create an account.
The Ninja Forms Zapier add-on is the tool that establishes the link between WordPress and the application you want to send data to. First, install and activate it on your website.
Next, create an account with Zapier themselves. Now you’re ready to get started!
2. Make a Zap!
Integrations between applications handled by Zapier are called Zaps. We’ll be creating a Zap that will connect Ninja Forms with Microsoft Excel. It’s super simple. Just log into your Zapier account and click “Make a Zap” in the left toolbar.
3. Setup your Zap to connect any WordPress form with Excel
Once you’re on the zap setup page, just search Ninja Forms in the App & Event search bar to find us:
Leave “New Form Submission” set as the Trigger Event and Continue. You’ll see a webhook URL:
Copy it, then head back to WordPress and into your form (or create one to the specifications you need). Add a Zapier action and paste the webhook into the Zapier Webhook field:
Now, Publish (save) the form, Preview the form, enter test data into each field (do not skip this step!), and Submit the form preview. Now head back to Zapier, and Continue.
There are a few options for you here. We recommend to Test & Continue to make sure the webhook has succeeded in establishing a connection. If anything goes wrong, Zapier will give you troubleshooting steps.
On a successful test, it’s now time to connect WordPress to Excel. Same as before, search and select them:
With your action selected, you’ll then be asked to sign in to the Microsoft account you want to connect to Zapier.
A pop-up window will appear and ask you to sign in with your Microsoft account.
After successfully signing in, Zapier will then take you to the main Zap screen. Make sure you save your spreadsheet to OneDrive, so you can access it from Zapier.
Next, you’ll select the specific Spreadsheet and Worksheet (the Excel spreadsheet itself you want to send data into, and the worksheet/page within that document that you’ll be populating with info).
Once you select your Spreadsheet and Worksheet, you should see the relevant headers for that Worksheet appear. Now just map the fields of your form to the sheet headers you want to populate:
Zapier is using the field data from when you submitted the form preview above to learn which field is which. When you continue, this test data will be sent through to your spreadsheet to confirm the connection!
Tada! Now you don’t need to do the Excel export manually!
That’s it. One-time, simple setup, and you don’t have to export your submissions every week anymore, because your Excel spreadsheet can update itself! It’s like magic, right?
We hope we’ve made your life easier with this connection! What integration would you like to see a tutorial for next?
