Submissions

Submissions are the saved records created when someone interacts with a Formie form.

They can represent a completed submission, a partially saved draft, or a submission that has been marked as spam. Once a submission exists, you can review it in the control panel, organise it with statuses, export its data, relate it to other elements, or render it back into the front end for editing.

Submission States

Formie tracks a few built-in submission states:

• complete submissions have finished the normal submission flow
• incomplete submissions are partially saved, such as save-and-continue drafts or multi-page progress
• spam submissions have been screened and marked as spam

These are system states. They describe what happened during submission processing.

Custom Statuses are different. A status is your team's workflow label on top of the saved submission, such as new, approved, or closed.

Common Ways to Work with Submissions

Organise Them with Statuses

Use Statuses when your team needs labels for review, follow-up, or internal processing after a submission has been saved.

Export Submission Data

To download submissions, open Formie → Submissions, narrow the list to what you need and choose Export… at the bottom of the list. A dialog opens with your current form, submission type, status and date range already filled in, so you can export straight away or adjust anything first. If you've searched the list, the export only includes those results, and the dialog says so. For example, from a Contact form filtered to October, you could also include incomplete submissions, untick a few columns and choose Excel. Columns are grouped by form, with All and None controls for each form and for the whole list. The export button shows how many submissions the file will contain.

Exports with more submissions than the Report Async Export Row Threshold setting run in the background, and your download starts when the file is ready. If you leave the page first, a download link is emailed to you when Craft’s mailer is configured.

The dialog can't apply filters from the submissions index's own filter menu, or those of a custom source. It tells you when one is active, so you can narrow the export with its settings instead. Selecting several forms, or All Forms, gives you a column for each form's fields, and fields that share a handle share a column.

To use Export…, grant Export submissions beneath Access submissions. Reports access is not required. The export only includes forms whose submissions the user can view. Users with the Reports section’s Export submissions or Manage reports permission can also export from the submissions index.

Use Reports when you need the same filters again, summary counts, charts, or scheduled email delivery.

Relate Submissions to Other Elements

Use Relations when a submission belongs to another Craft element such as an entry or product, or when you want to look up related submissions later.

Select Submissions from Other Elements

Use Element Field when you want another Craft element to choose and store a reference to a Formie submission.

Edit Submissions in the Control Panel

When you view or edit a submission in the control panel, Formie can honour the same field and page conditions used on the front end.

Set the default under Formie → Settings → Submissions → Control Panel Field Conditions. Override per form under Form → Settings → Submissions — choose Use Formie default to inherit the plugin setting.

Use Show all fields when your team prefers the full layout at all times.

When a submission is saved in the control panel, Formie records the Craft user who made the edit. Enable the Last Edited By column from the submission index column menu to see who last updated each submission.

Let Users Edit Saved Submissions

If you need to render an existing submission back into the front end so a user can update it, see Editing Submissions.

Protect Sensitive Field Content

Use Content Encryption when selected field values should not be readable from a database or database backup without a separately stored key. The guide covers what is protected, key setup across environments, enabling fields, locked submissions, recovery and key rotation.

Developer Access

If you are working with submissions in templates or custom code:

• use Submission Queries to fetch submissions in Twig or PHP
• use Submission Workflow when you need to hook into submission processing stages or tasks
• use Submission Content when you need the right value format for output, exports, summaries, emails, or integrations
• use Content Encryption when you need to protect selected values while they are stored
• use Submission for the public properties and methods available on the element itself