Your search for the ultimate guide to WordPress form submissions ends here! Prepare for a deep dive into the world of form submissions, where you’ll learn invaluable insights about accessing your submission entries, limiting, exporting, deleting, editing, and so much more.
This guide is designed to help you take full control of your form submissions like never before and equip you with the knowledge necessary to effectively manage your form entry data collection. Let’s begin!
Table of contents
- Access form submissions in WordPress
- Limit submission entries in your form
- Export form submissions (free & paid options)
- Edit form submissions
- Display submissions on the front end
- Delete form submissions in WordPress
- Set submissions to expire (GDPR)
- Schedule export of form submissions
- Prevent spam form submissions
- Form Submission Merge Tags
1. Access form submissions in WordPress
At Ninja Forms we believe in empowering our users with the flexibility and freedom to collect and access as much data as they need. So, unlike many of our competitors on the market, our plugin offers free access to your form submission data. But that’s not everything! You can also receive an unlimited number of submissions from your WordPress forms without any caps or restrictions imposed.
There are two ways you can access your form entries on your WordPress site. The first one is going to the Ninja Forms Dashboard, and clicking the gear icon on the form you want to view your form submissions.
The second option to access your submissions is to click on the Submissions tab and select a form from the dropdown menu you want to view the submissions.
If you want to learn more about working with your WordPress form entries? Check our documentation for Submission Management.
2. Limit submission entries in your form
The process of limiting form submissions using Ninja Forms is a breeze. There are multiple ways to restrict form entries. The most popular one is to limit the total number of submissions per your form.
Even the free version of Ninja Forms let you set a limit for the number of submission entries received on your form. Additionally, you can also add a message to the user once the submission limit is reached.
Another common way to restrict submissions is by email address. Navigate to your Restrictions tab. If you don’t see a feature, you need to make sure Developer Mode is enabled. Then locate the Unique Field and select the Email. This setting will prevent duplicated entries on your form but you can also use it for making your coupon code single-use, etc.
If you want to learn other ways how to restrict submissions in your WordPress forms, check Limit Submission Entries in Your Form By User, IP, or Date, and How to Prevent Duplicate Submissions in WordPress.
3. Export form submissions (free & paid options)
Reviewing your submission entries within the WordPress dashboard is inconvenient especially when you need to analyze and share the data with your team. With Ninja Forms, you can say goodbye to the limitations of the WordPress dashboard. Our free core plugin lets you export your form submissions for free into a CSV file. No add-on is needed.
To export submissions to a CSV file, navigate to Ninja Forms > Submissions. Once you select the form you wish to export submissions from, hover over the submission and click Export. Doing this will automatically download a CSV file of your submission entry.
Additionally, Ninja Forms allows you to export your form submissions to file formats such as PDF or Excel, and even send your submission entries to Google Sheets. This is however a paid feature.
If this is something you are interested in exploring, head over to 4 Ways to Export WordPress Form Submissions or check our Excel Export add-on to export files to Excel or the PDF Form Submissions add-on to convert your submission to PDF.
4. Edit form submissions
Do you want to allow users to review and edit the content of their previously submitted forms? Ninja Forms User Management add-on incorporates the User Access functionality that lifts the restrictions up from the administrator user role only.
Want to learn how to grant access to your users so they can view or edit their form submissions? Check our quick tutorial Allow Users to Edit WordPress Form Submissions
5. Display submissions on the front end
When it comes to submission viewing options with Ninja Forms, you have two ways to display your form entries on the front end of your WordPress website: Submissions Table Block (free) and Front-End Posting add-on (paid).
But what exactly distinguishes the Submissions Table Block and the Front-End Posting add-on when presenting the form entries on your site? We took a closer look at these two in our article How to Display Form Submissions in WordPress (Front-End) So be sure to check it out!
6. Delete form submissions in WordPress
There are two ways to delete form submissions from your WordPress site. Using Ninja Forms, you can either delete individual submissions or you can delete submissions in bulk.
To delete individual submissions, navigate to the Submissions dashboard and select the form you want to delete submissions for. Then, select the individual form submission and click Trash. This will delete your form submission.
If you want to delete all submissions from the same form, select the specific form and mark the checkbox located next to #. Then scroll down and click the Bulk Actions button and choose the Move to Trash option. This action will delete all submissions in bulk.
7. Set submissions to expire (Auto-delete form entries)
Working with form submissions can be time-consuming. Reviewing and analyzing the data is one thing. But what if you need to auto-delete submissions containing sensitive information and you’re dealing with a large volume of submissions?
With our core plugin, you can effortlessly automate the deletion of your form submission data, whether it’s after a day or even a hundred days. No more manual deletion! Ninja Forms handles auto-deletion seamlessly with a free feature “SET SUBMISSIONS TO EXPIRE”.
You can locate this feature under the Emails & Actions of your form builder > Record Submission. Once you enable this action to store your WordPress form submissions, navigate to Advanced Settings and toggle on Set Submissions to Expire.
Enter the number of days you want the submissions to be trashed. The minimum value is one day. Please note, once you enable this setting, it affects all existing and new form submissions. Also, keep in mind this setting only trashes the form submission record. Uploaded files would persist.
If you want to protect uploaded files to your WordPress site, sending files directly to an external storage service using the File Uploads add-on is a more secure solution for your website. You can choose from Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon S3 cloud storage.
8. Schedule export of your form submissions
Managing form submission records is an essential part of your workflow. However, if you’re juggling multiple sites or managing form entries for your clients, time spent logging in and checking submissions can quickly add up. Additionally, if you rely on email notifications for each submission entry, retrieving a daily or a weekly summary becomes a tedious task.
With Scheduled Submissions Export, you can automate form submission management effortlessly. You can schedule regular digests of all submissions from any WordPress form on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. This also streamlines the process of sharing the submission data with other team members or clients.
Using our scheduling add-on, you can customize the schedule to suit your or clients’ preferences and simplify your workflow by managing schedules from a centralized location Ninja Forms offers.
That’s it! You’ll probably agree that saving even a tiny amount of your time can make a significant difference, helping you to focus on the crucial tasks that require your creativity and vision to drive your business toward success. So take a proactive step and incorporate Scheduled Submissions Export into your workflow today!
9. Prevent spam form submissions
This blog post about WordPress submissions would not be complete without addressing the problem of unwanted spam submissions. The battle is real, but not all is lost when you follow our tips to reduce contact form spam in WordPress.
Believe it or not, even the free version of the Ninja Forms plugin offers WordPress spam protection featuring Honeypot, Anti-Spam field, and Google reCAPTCHA v2 and v3.
If you are dealing with spam submissions, we highly recommend checking out our dedicated article on “How to Stop WordPress Form Spam.” You’ll discover how each Ninja Forms feature works to prevent form submission spam, and you’ll also learn about additional tools to strengthen your defenses against unwanted spam.
10. Form Submissions Merge Tags
Before we dive into specific submission merge tags, let’s talk about the merge tags functionality in your forms first. This Ninja Forms feature allows data to be pulled from different sources within WordPress and populated in the location the merge tag is placed.
To better understand how the merge tags work on your form, we created a summary page on a multi step, and added merge tags for all existing form fields on the WordPress form.
With the Merge Tag button, we added the email, name, and phone number field merge tags to the summary page within the HTML field. The merge tag functionality dynamically populates the data your users fill in the specific form fields. This means once they preview the form, they will see in-time data filled in the form – not the {field:email}, but the actual email address, etc.
Another popular merge tag for your form submissions is to attach an uploaded image to your confirmation email. Select the merge tag through the merge-tag icon > File Uploads > File Upload Embed and insert the :embed modifier to the file uploads merge tag.
Want to learn more about dynamically generating data into your WordPress form? Check our blog post dedicated to submissions merge tags 12 Powerful Merge Tag Examples For Your WordPress Form Submissions!
Congratulations! You’ve just mastered WordPress form submissions!
You deserve a big shoutout to stick with us all the way to the end of this article. We hope you enjoyed our deep dive into WordPress form submissions and feel confident when it comes to submission management.
Ninja Forms is an excellent choice for your WordPress site. If you haven’t yet experienced our core plugin, download it here and explore powerful free features including calculations, spam protection, unlimited forms, unlimited submissions, and much more!
Want to learn more about Ninja Forms and its products? Visit our FAQs section for general inquiries about our contact form plugin.
