How to configure the email details in Visual Form Builder
One of the more common support questions I see for Visual Form Builder is how the Reply To Name and Email fields work. This is probably because if you are not familiar with the process of sending an email through a server, it can seem a little obtuse.
When you make an email in a program such as Gmail or Outlook, that program controls the sending details. It knows your display name (usually your first and last name), your email address, subject line, and all other things that go along with an email.
However, when sending an email without one of these programs we have to tell the server what each of those are.
Email configuration details
As you can see in the image above, all emails have these details in common. You can email to one or more people, set a subject, plus the name and email of who it’s from. Let’s go over how to do this in Visual Form Builder.
Go to your form and click on the Form Settings button. Click on Email to reveal the email details settings.
Email details settings screen
So, we can see that the same kinds of details can be customized to control what your email looks like when received in the email client.
- E-mail Subject = Subject Line (painfully obvious, I know)
- Your Name or Company = From Name
- Reply-To E-mail = From E-mail
- E-mail(s) To = To
That’s great, you say, but what about if you want to have the user’s name and email already set in the email? This is great for when you want to reply directly to the user via email. This is where the User’s Name (optional) and User’s E-mail (optional) fields come into play.
- User’s Name – requires your form to have a Text field and the Required option set to Yes.
- User’s E-mail – requires your form to have an Email field and the Required option set to Yes.
NOTE: If you have not fulfilled those requirements, the drop downs will not be populated with choices.
In the end, all we’re really doing is sending an email and we have to configure the program (in this case, the server) with all of our email details. If you have any questions, please leave a comment!
47 thoughts on “How to configure the email details in Visual Form Builder”
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LOVE this extension, thank you!!!
I’m having an issue with comments showing up funky underneath the forms I created. I tried removing comments from pages via plugin but they still appear under forms in a strange manor. Any assistance is great appreciated!
Thanks!
Thank you!
I followed your instructions.
I created the Text Field “USER” and in September I Required option to Yes
However, Is there a way to automatically fill in the Text Field “USER” the current_user?
In this way the user logged in should not enter your name again.
Thanks to the collaboration.
Davide
Hi Matthew,
This seems like a fantastic plugin! Is it possible with the free or pro version to add images into the email? Thanks in advance.
-Ben
Hey Ben,
That’s currently not available but is something I’d like to get to at some point.
Hi Matthew,
I think your newest update claims to have included image attachment to the email, right? But I’m still unable to upload the logo. It gives me the option to choose a file to upload, and when I upload the image, it says that it worked, but it actually isn’t there. Also, can I add a logo/image to the confirmation email that the applicant receives? Any help would be greatly appreciated. And thanks for building this plugin!
Most likely a problem with file permissions.
Hi, I’m having a bit of trouble with the email details of a form I’m creating. I have the name and email fields required but it’s still not populating in the drop downs in the Form Settings Email section. Since there’s an error it won’t let me save the form either. Please feel free to email me. Thanks!
Did you change the Required option to Yes and save the form? That’s the important bit to make them show up in the dropdown.
I am using this form builder to generate a notification that dumps into a technical support ticketing system.
It uses the subject of the email as the name of the ticket, but needs a differentiator from just the subject line to make it unique.
Right now i have the subject as (New Term Form)
I have an Employee First and Last Name field i would like to be added to the subject line so that it shows Subject: New Term Form – First Name Last Name
This way each submisison to this form is unique and a new ticket is created in my ticketing system at work.
I know this can be done, its just a simple dump of the field ID into the subject line each time the form submits…i just dont know how to do it, or how to call it!
any suggestions?
It can be done, but it’s not the easiest. I do plan on improving the subject line to include more of a templating system, though.
For now, you can hook into the
vfb_email_form_settingsfilter.I also want to alter the subject line but I am not familiar with hooking into filters. When do you anticipate improving the subject line to be more of a template system?
Ability to include merge tags was added a couple releases ago. Here’s the documentation on Templating with VFB.
I discovered that once you set the “User’s Name” or “User’s E-mail”, you can no longer edit “Your Name or Company” or “Reply-To E-mail” fields. They stay grayed out until you go back and undo the settings on the user side.
This is intentional. If you need to revert back, all you have to do is unselect the option and it becomes editable.
hi, still not getting emails after the form is filled out. used and wp-mail-smtp and tested it, went through but still not getting emails ….BUT it’s only to a particular email which is set-up on windows mail. Other emails are fine when i ran the testing.
do you have a solution for me please? thanks
Some hosts block emails from/to the same domain. You may have to whitelist certain emails in your server.
VFB is not sending out emails. on the cpanel(Entries) the Sender Email:
Emailed To: are both blank, How do i resolve this
Make sure you have configured all of the email details properly. If they are, check the FAQ.
Hello, I would like to know if is somehow possible to show in the email the instruction field of the form.
Thanks
The Instruction fields are not included in the email as they are simply a way to insert custom HTML and content into the form.
Great plugin, but I’ve got a problem that makes it almost unusable. I can’t seem to change any of the form settings after creating the form. I can’t update the Email Settings to change the sender name or email address, I can’t update the Confirmation text, can’t turn on the notification. Pretty much any setting after the form has been created. Very frustrating. Any thoughts?
WP 3.4.2, latest VFB Pro
It’s possible you have a theme or plugin conflict. For better support, please use the Support Forum.
Whatever happened in the latest update (2.1.1) seems to have fixed the issue. Thanks.
Since the latest WP and VFB upgrades, my emails are sent from wordpress@. Emails were working fine.
Is there a something I need to change now? My settings were as follows:
No other smtp plugin
Form Settings – Email – Your Name or Company = CIS
Form Settings – Email – Reply-To E-Mail = “Your Email” <-this is a field
Form Settings – Email – E-Mail(s) To = "a real email" <-this is a field
Form Settings – Notification – Send confirmation email to user = checked
Form Settings – Notification – Sender name = a real generic email address
Form Settings – Notification – Reply-To = My real email address
Form Settings – Notification – Email To = "Your email"
Thoughts? Again, I receive wordpress@ instead of from the person who filled out the form.
The reason you are seeing the emails being sent from wordpress@yourdomain.com is because your admin email does not match the domain that the form is being sent from. So, if you have a @gmail.com address as your admin email, it will build a local wordpress@yourdomain.com email. This mirrors behavior from within WordPress itself to send certain emails.
To solve this, you can either:
I’d recommend using WP Mail SMTP because it helps solve a lot of other issues in addition to you not having to change your admin email.
All your instructions are GREAT.. but they dont WORK!!
i HAVE required email fields
I have required text Name field…
but your program does NOT offer those options in the drop down when trying to build the EMAIL option
or the NOTIFICATION Option….
THEY ARE JUST ABSENT!!
I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS ALL DAY AND IM VERY FRUSTRATED AND READY TO BAG YOUR PLUGIN
I assume you are talking about the free version in which case I released an update today. Update to 2.6.9 and you should be good to go.
Please be nice
Hi,
I really appreciate the plugin you did, especially for the dynamic forms. really nice!
I would have a question concerning the mail generation. in the form I use different conditional formating allowing me to display secondary selection fields, in function of the submitter age, number of points, etc.
Is it possible to hide the elements not initialized on the mail sent? (something like – if given field is empty – don’t write output of this in the mail).
Maybe is just question of configuration, what I noticed is that all the selection are written in the mail, even they are empty.
thanks a lot
Good news. I’ve been working on a new hook that will allow you to decide whether or not to include the empty fields in the email. The Hooks page will be updated when the next update is released.
super !!!!!
!
Really appreciated
I have created 2 forms by using visual form builder. One is for contact us and other is booking.
Emails are receiving to my email address via contact us form. But booking page can submit without any error, but not receiving confirmation emails. This happen couple of days back. I have tried so long time, but still the same issue.
I really do not how to configure receiving email address. Please help me.
Contact your host and ask to see the email logs.
Hello Matthew
Thanks for the mail hook, i will try to do the settings in the next days.
I updates the plugin to the latest version (pro) issued very few days ago, Unfortunately I need to do it manually – because the host where the site is located, doesn’t allow autoupdate to wordpress… and I remarked some “unexpected” behaviors…
In the instructions the html does not allow anymore (like on the previous version) having the character (“). Seems being interpreted. The links for example are broken pointing to inexistent pages. I corrected this on my side removing the ” character, now seems quite fine, still a little checking to update the page for html code combining the (“) character and (‘) character.
Second element I remarked is that, the templates profiling is no more functional – i am using in the mail subject something like
1er Mai 2013 – {vfb-201} {vfb-200} – Identifiant: {vfb-433}
The subject mail i receive is truncated to the first letter for example 5 instead of 5127e93d60f80. it worked perfectly on the previous version.
When sending the mail at inscription one of 2 cases i get the following messages repeated times:
Warning: array_key_exists() [function.array-key-exists]: The second argument should be either an array or an object in [myPathtoFolder]/visual-form-builder-pro/visual-form-builder-pro.php on line 3951
Warning: array_key_exists() [function.array-key-exists]: The second argument should be either an array or an object in [myPathtoFolder]/visual-form-builder-pro/visual-form-builder-pro.php on line 3953
Warning: array_key_exists() [function.array-key-exists]: The second argument should be either an array or an object in [myPathtoFolder]/visual-form-builder-pro/visual-form-builder-pro.php on line 3955
is there something I could do to correct?
thanks a lot
regards,
B
Hi Matthew,
For being sure the upgrade was correct, i exported the form, deactivated and removed by ftp on server the plugin, removed from mysql all the vbf- tables, and reimported back the form. Nothing changed same warning appearing several times.
The form contains a profiling – parts of the form are displayed in function of the selection of the first fields. in the page displayed on submission success I’m doing a template, including all the possible options in the form (a part of them initialized, others no). in the previous version all was fine, now i get more than 200 warnings.
And also, with the latest version – i would have one supplementary observation – the new form seems no more accepting utf8 – a lot of special characters (éèçàù) specific to french language, now are interpreted – and in consequence wrongly displayed – for example “préfétable” instead of “préférable”
Unfortunately I think in meanwhile I will need to go back to previous version… A shame for the mail hook, it would have been a nice option.
Nevertheless, please don’t take it bad, the plugin remains the best form builder I found till now
If the hook for the mail one day become a toggle in the interface, (like include in mail if not defined Yes/No), and I18N becomes easier, I would really say – this is really “form building just a LOT easier”.
regards,
B
Same problem with tag marge. Have u solved?
Great Plug-in.
Is there any way to exclude the “upload” field from the email notification?
I have users uploading large files and it shows an internal error message after upload has finished and not the confirmation page.
If I turn off the email notification to admin then it works perfect.
So all I need to do is exclude the “upload” field from the email that is sent to admin.
Can you help with this as I don’t want to disable the email to admin?
Tag Marge is not working. It’s showing only first characters. How can I solve it?
We are finding this plugin a fantastic tool, really glad we went pro.
However, I think we are starting to push the boundaries of the form at present, using it as a tool for Leaders to notify us of activities they are planning. Once the form is completed we use the Notification function to send an email to the Leaders line manager to approve the activity by replying to us. This means that the leader completing the form does not receive a copy of the form they have completed, something they are asking for.
Is is possible to have a second email address defined in the notification section, predefined by a field within the form, or alternatively is it possible to redirect to a printable version of the form they have completed?
Anything help or support with this will be gratefully received.
hi!,I like your writing very a lot! proportion we keep in touch more about your article on AOL? I require a specialist in this area to unravel my problem. Maybe that’s you! Having a look ahead to look you.
Is there a way to get the logged-in user’s name and email address into a form without the user having to type them in again?
Have managed to work out how to do this myself, using the vfb_filter_field_default function.
Hello Matthew,
Really nice plugin, but I need your help.
a) How can I edit the email output form. I want to edit the table, the space aroud and everything else to do it more compact. I now how to use the E-mal Designer, but like I said, i need to edit more.
b) I have a time input field in my form with HH and MM with the start time 00:00. I want to change it to 18:00.
I hope you can help me Matthew.
Greets, Thomas.
Just a small remark concerning the translation in french:
Désolé, mais cette forme n’est plus accepte les soumissions.
should be
Désolé, mais ce formulaire n’accepte plus des soumissions.
Hi Matthew,
Thank you for the clear FAQ and the nice plugin. I just installed it in my website but I do know why the email forwarding function does not work. I entered 3 emails for forwarding function (email to). When I do test to my website, I did not receive any email notifications of the form submission. Could you kindly help and fix this ? Many thanks.
I have the same form displayed on several pages. Is there any way to have the unique page title display on the email without having to recreate a similar form numerous times?
Use the Hidden field. It has an option to include the Post/Page Title in the email. You can then use the Merge Tags to display that in the subject if you wish.
hello, why is the senders email get cut off especially if its a long email. would this affect emails sent? emails were working well using form and all of a sudden stopped. please shed some light into this thanks