How to Filter Form Submissions When Exporting to Excel
FormSmarts has long made it straightforward to export form submissions to Excel or CSV, turning every form field into a column and every submission into a row. Recent updates have made reports more customizable, with options to choose exactly which fields and metadata appear in your spreadsheet, and a new ability to filter submissions by field value.
Exporting Form Submissions to Excel
The FormSmarts Excel report generator allows customers to download stored form submissions as a spreadsheet. Each submission becomes a row; each form field becomes a column. You can export as a native Excel (.xlsx) file or as a CSV, covering any date range you choose — a specific start and end date, or a preset period like Last Week or This Month.
Before you can export, data storage must be enabled for your form. Business accounts have storage on by default; Pro accounts need to turn it on per form in the Submit Actions tab of the Form Details screen.
Choosing Which Fields and Metadata to Include
By default, your Excel report includes every field in your form. But you can also create focused, custom reports by selecting exactly the columns you need.
In the Include fields section of the report settings, you will find a checklist of every field in your form alongside a set of metadata items. Simply check or uncheck each item to include or exclude it from the spreadsheet.
The metadata items available are:
- Date submitted — the timestamp of the submission, adjusted to your chosen time zone
- Reference number — a unique identifier for the submission, or a link to view it online
- Form submission context — information passed to the form at the time of submission, such as the page it was embedded on or a campaign parameter. Useful if you track the source of leads through your forms
- Payment information — the payment amount, currency, processor name, transaction ID and fee, available for forms using FormSmarts payment integration with PayPal or Stripe
If you have never opened the Report Settings panel before, it is worth a look — you may find it saves you a lot of manual column-hiding in Excel.
Filtering Submissions by Field Value
The most significant new addition is the ability to filter submissions by the value of any field before you export. Instead of downloading everything and filtering in Excel, you can now define your criteria upfront and export only the submissions that match.
Building a Filter
Click Fields & Filters in the export settings to open the filter builder. You can add up to three levels of nested rules combined with AND and OR logic.
Each rule has three parts:
- Field — choose any field from your form (see limitations below for unsupported field types)
- Operator — choose how to match the value
- Value — enter the value to match against
The operators available depend on the field type:
| Field Type | Available Operators |
|---|---|
| Text fields, email, URL, phone, dropdown | equals, not equals, contains, starts with, ends with, is empty, is not empty |
| Number, positive integer | equals, not equals, <, ≤, >, ≥, between |
| Date | equals, not equals, <, ≤, >, ≥, between |
| Time | equals, not equals, <, ≤, >, ≥ |
| Yes/No (boolean) | equals, not equals |
Rules within a group are combined with either AND (all rules must match) or OR (any rule must match). You can nest groups inside other groups to express more complex logic — for example, a top-level AND group with one of its items being an OR sub-group.
Limitations
The following field types are not supported in filters and will not appear in the field list:
- File upload fields
- Signature fields
- Long text fields
Phone number matching works by comparing normalised digits. If you enter “+44 7887 948495”, the filter strips formatting and matches on “+447887948495”. If there is no leading +, all non-digit characters are stripped, so “(123) 123-4567” matches as “1231234567”. Note that phone number filtering is not be available on all subscription plans.
Example 1: Sales Inquiries from the Phoenix Area
Suppose you run an inquiry form that asks respondents to choose a subject — Sales Inquiry, Support Inquiry, or Billing Inquiry — and to provide their phone number.
You want to export all sales inquiries submitted by people in the Phoenix, AZ area (area codes 602, 480, and 623).
Set up the filter as follows:
"Subject of Your Inquiry" equals "Sales Inquiry"
AND (
"Phone Number" starts with "602"
OR "Phone Number" starts with "480"
OR "Phone Number" starts with "623"
)
The top-level AND group contains two items: the subject rule and a nested OR group for the three area codes. The export will include only submissions that match the “sales inquiry” subject and have a phone number beginning with one of the three area codes.
Example 2: Conference Catering for Attendees with Dietary Requirements
Suppose you run a conference registration form that collects a ticket type — General Admission, VIP, or Speaker — and a dietary requirement — None, Vegetarian, Vegan, or Nut Allergy. Your caterer needs a headcount of VIP attendees and speakers who have a dietary requirement other than “None”, so you can arrange appropriate meals.
Set up the filter as follows:
("Ticket Type" equals "VIP"
OR "Ticket Type" equals "Speaker")
AND (
"Dietary Requirement" equals "Vegetarian"
OR "Dietary Requirement" equals "Vegan"
OR "Dietary Requirement" equals "Nut Allergy"
)
The first OR group captures both VIP and Speaker ticket holders. The second OR group matches any of the three dietary requirements. The top-level AND ensures both conditions must be true. With a single export you have an accurate catering list — no manual filtering in Excel required.
This example shows how nesting OR groups inside an AND group lets you express conditions that would otherwise require multiple separate exports and a spreadsheet merge.
Filtering by Tags
If you have tagged form submissions manually, or if your form uses system tags set automatically by FormSmarts, you can restrict your export to submissions carrying a specific combination of tags.
In the Tags section of the report settings, enter one or more tags. Only submissions that carry all of the selected tags will be included. Common use cases include:
- Checked-in — the system tag added when an event attendee is checked in using the QR code in their confirmation email
- Custom workflow tags — tags you add manually (or with a webhook or API automation) to mark a submission as reviewed, approved, followed up, or requiring a callback
Tag filters and field value filters work together: both conditions must be satisfied for a submission to appear in the Excel report.
Getting Started
To export your form submissions to Excel with filters, open the FormSmarts Report Generator, select your form and date range, then click Select Fields & Edit Filters. If you have questions, the FormSmarts team is on hand to help.
Posted on Apr 24th, 2026 in online form.
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Tags: excel, form results, form to excel
View and Test Your Forms Privately While They’re Disabled
To make your workflow smoother, we’ve updated how disabled forms behave. You can now tinker, test, and perfect your forms while they are disabled, allowing you to finalize your work without showing a “work in progress” to the public.
What’s New: Access Even When “Off”
Previously, a disabled form was inaccessible to everyone. Now, we’ve created a way for you and your team to work on them privately.
- Logged-In Access: If you are logged into FormSmarts, you can now view and submit disabled forms exactly as if they were live.
- Team-Wide Compatibility: This applies to the account admin and all users associated with the account.
- Standalone Only: This change specifically applies to the standalone version of your form. If you have the form embedded on your website, it will remain hidden from the public.
Identifying Disabled Forms
To help you keep track of a form’s status, we’ve added a status banner at the bottom of the form page. This banner identifies when a form is currently disabled, so you know you’re viewing it in a private testing capacity.
Quick Reminder: Managing Form Visibility
Here is a quick refresher on how to manage your form visibility settings:
- Manual Toggle: Enable or disable any form via the Forms tab in the Form Builder.
- Scheduling: Use the scheduling feature to automatically enable or disable forms at specific dates and times.
- Custom Messaging: When you disable a form, you can customize the message shown to public visitors (e.g., “Check back soon!” or “Registrations are now over”).
This update is designed to help you move from draft to live with more confidence and less friction.
Posted on Mar 27th, 2026 in collaboration, form builder.
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PayPal & Stripe Fees Now in Excel Reports
Many FormSmarts members leverage our integration with PayPal and Stripe to charge fees on their online forms. Most members also export registrations, memberships, and other data from their forms to an Excel spreadsheet.
FormSmarts has traditionally provided details about payments including the amount paid and payment ID in reports.
In response to user needs, we now include the fees charged by the payment processor (PayPal or Stripe) in these Excel reports. This information is displayed in a new column titled “Payment Fee“. This update will allow customers to calculate the total net amount collected by applying a simple formula within Excel.
If you prefer not to have the payment fee details included in Excel reports, you can easily remove this information by accessing the Settings of the Report Generator and unchecking the Payment Fee field.
Posted on Jan 23rd, 2025 in payment form.
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Tags: excel, payment, paypal, stripe
How to Charge Recurring Fees with a Stripe Subscription
The Stripe integration supports two types of recurring payments: subscriptions and payments in installments. A subscription charges a customer at regular intervals until it is canceled, while a recurring payment in installments allows customers to pay in a set number of installments.
If you’re familiar with FormSmarts’ PayPal integration, the syntax for subscriptions and payments in installments remains the same. Simply add your Stripe API key to FormSmarts and set the form’s Submit Action to Integrate with Stripe.
Stripe Subscription
With Stripe, you can easily charge your customers a recurring membership or subscription fee. Once a customer has set up a Stripe subscription through FormSmarts, Stripe automatically charges them yearly, monthly, weekly, or even daily. The subscription runs indefinitely until cancelled.
In the example below, customers are charged $25 (Individual Membership) or $45 (Family Membership) monthly. They also have the option to make a donation each month.
Paying in Installments with Stripe
You can as easily allow your customers to pay in installments with Stripe. Once a customer has set up a Stripe subscription though FormSmarts, Stripe charges them for the installment amount monthly. In this example, individuals can choose to pay in two or four monthly installments.
Try Payment in Installments with Stripe
Advanced Recurring Payment Use Cases
Subscription for Multiple Products
FormSmarts enables you to combine multiple recurring fees on a form, provided they have the same recurring period (i.e. yearly, monthly, …) and recurring times (number of installments). For instance, you could offer your customers options to pay in installments for both Days and Overnight Stays as shown on this demo. However, both must be paid in the same number of installments and recurring period (e.g., monthly in this example).
Recurring Donations
In addition to charging your customer recurring fixed amounts on a form, you can also invite them to make a donation with each payment by adding a donation box to the form. For instance, on the first demo presented on this page, we use a donation box to suggest our members make a monthly donation when they renew their membership. You can create multiple donation boxes to allow contributors to support different causes or projects.
Trial Subscriptions
The PayPal integration allows FormSmarts members to offer a trial period before a customer starts a paid subscription. However, we’ve noticed that few FormSmarts members ever use trials, so the Stripe integration doesn’t support them. If you need to use trials for your recurring payments, please reach out to our support team.
Posted on Dec 5th, 2024 in payment form.
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Tags: payment, payment integration, stripe
Safeguard Your Customers’ Data with Password-Protected PDFs
As the custodian of your customers’ sensitive information, it’s crucial you ensure that the data collected through your forms is well protected. FormSmarts offers a variety of options to help you safeguard form submissions.
Many businesses prefer to receive form responses via email for timely action. However, relying solely on standard email can expose you to several risks:
- Account Compromise: If your email account is hacked, someone could gain access to the data.
- Inadvertent Leaks: Anyone who has access to your phone or computer could accidentally expose a local copy of the data.
View Form Submissions Online
To mitigate these risks, FormSmarts provides an option to send notification emails that do not display the submitted data directly in the message. Instead, you can view the complete form entry online through a secure link. This requires signing in to your FormSmarts account, adding an extra layer of security.
Downloading Secure PDFs
If you prefer to download submissions as PDFs, FormSmarts allows you to password-protect these reports. This means anyone attempting to access the document will need the password, thereby safeguarding the data from unauthorized access on your devices and in your email.
Setting up password protection for PDF documents is straightforward:
- For forms sent only to your primary email address (the login email), create a unique PDF password (distinct from your FormSmarts password) and enable PDF protection.
- If your form is sent to multiple email addresses, create a sub-user for each recipient. They will need to sign in to FormSmarts to set up their own PDF password (again, the PDF password must differ from their FormSmarts password). Once everyone has created a PDF password, complete setup as directed.
Conclusion
FormSmarts also provides a third option: secure encrypted email. While slightly more complicated to set up, encrypted email provides additional benefits and a high level of protection.
By implementing these measures, you can better protect your customers’ data while maintaining efficient access and communication.
Posted on Oct 23rd, 2024 in online form.
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Tags: collaboration, form to pdf, security
How to Create an Online Form With Stripe
Are you looking to streamline your online payment forms? With FormSmarts Stripe integration, accepting credit cards and collecting fees has never been easier.
To get started, simply follow these steps:
- Add fees to your form: Include the description, amount, and currency of each fee directly on your form. Check out our quick three-minute video tutorial for guidance. If you’ve used our popular PayPal integration, the format is the same.
- Integrate with Stripe: Edit your form and navigate to the Submit Actions tab in the Form Builder. Select Integrate with Stripe as shown on the screenshot below, and save your changes.
Stripe Configuration
To activate Stripe payments on your forms, you’ll need to add your Stripe API Key to FormSmarts. Don’t worry; this is a one-time setup unless you change your API Key.
Here’s how to do it:
- Log in to FormSmarts’ API Console.
- Select HTTP Method:
POST (Create). - Enter the Endpoint URL:
https://formsmarts.com/api/v1/integrations/stripe. - Open a new tab and access the Developers section of your Stripe account.
- Copy your Secret Key (or create a Restricted Key).
- Return to FormSmarts’ API Console and type
api_key =into the Request Data box - Paste your Stripe key as shown below and submit
That’s it! With FormSmarts Stripe integration, you can effortlessly accept payments and manage fees directly from your forms.
For additional information, please read the Stripe integration documentation. If you need help or have any questions, please feel free to post a comment below or contact us from the Help section of the website.
Posted on Jun 13th, 2024 in payment form.
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Tags: payment integration, stripe
Enhancing Your Reporting Experience: New Features in the Report Generator
We’re excited to announce two additions to our Report Generator, designed to empower our users to create custom Excel reports according to their unique needs.
Choose the Fields (Columns) Shown in Excel Reports
Our Excel reports now offer even more flexibility by allowing you to customize the displayed fields/columns. By default, reports include essential information like form fields, submission reference numbers, submission links, submission timestamps, payment details (for payment forms), and contextual information passed during submission.
However, we understand that your reporting needs may vary. That’s why we’ve introduced the ability to create tailored reports, that include only the specific fields relevant to your analysis. Simply navigate to the Fields section in the Settings and check/uncheck the desired fields and metadata items to include/exclude them in your report. It’s that simple!
Filter Form Responses by Tags
We’ve taken customization a step further by introducing the option to filter form responses based on tags. If you’ve assigned tags to form responses or if our system has automatically tagged submissions, you can now generate reports that exclusively include submissions matching specific tag criteria.
For instance, imagine creating a report highlighting all event attendees who not only registered but also checked in. This can be achieved by filtering submissions with the “checked-in” system tag, added when the event organizer scans QR codes from FormSmarts confirmation emails or PDF receipts.
These new features are designed to enhance your reporting experience, providing you with better control over the information presented in your Excel reports. We believe that by offering these customization options, we’re empowering you to extract precisely the insights you need.
We’d love to hear your thoughts—share your feedback with us!
Posted on Nov 15th, 2023 in event registration, form builder.
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Tags: excel, form results, form to excel, report generator
eSign a Form With Your Phone
eSign a form with your phone — even when you submit it with a computer.
When you submit a form with a phone or tablet, you can e-sign it directly on the screen, exactly as you would write your signature on a paper document.
FormSmarts provides several signing options on devices without a touchscreen like computers or smart TVs. First, you can write your eSignature on paper and scan it with the device’s camera. You can also eSign the form with your mouse or trackpad. Last but not least, you can easily capture your eSignature with your phone.
How to Sign a Form With Your Phone
FormSmarts suggests the best way to sign a form based on the capabilities of your device. On a computer, we usually recommend that you write your signature on paper and scan it with the camera (demo video). But you can also sign on your phone and instantly transfer the signature to the form on your computer.
To get started, click on the signature box of a form on your computer.
If the form reports that no camera is available or when your browser asks you to permit FormSmarts to use the camera of your computer, click the Sign on your phone link.
A QR code appears on screen
Scan the QR Code With Your Phone
Open the camera app of your phone and point the camera at the QR code. Tap the formsmarts.com banner to open the link with the browser of your phone, as shown below.
This screenshot shows how to scan the QR code on an iPhone, but it works the same way on Android.
Draw Your eSignature
Draw your eSignature on your phone and tap the Use This Signature button to transfer the signature to the form on your computer. If needed, use the Clear button to reset the signature pad and try again. The signature pad works both when holding your phone in portrait and landscape mode (shown below).
Posted on Jul 2nd, 2023 in online form.
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Tags: esignature
How to Accept Payments in Installments for Your Events
Allowing your customers to pay in installments on a form is as easy as collecting a one-off payment.
Consumers are increasingly demanding to be able to pay for goods and services in installments. If you organize an event that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars, you may have to provide an option for attendees to pay in several installments.
To offer a payment plan on a form, format the description of the fee, the number of installments and the amount of each installment as: Pay in 3 installments (3x$50 USD/month).
You can also propose weekly or bi-monthly installments or other payment plans that suit your needs. Remember to set up the form to collect a payment.
Payment Flow for Payments in Installments
The payment process for a payment in installments is slightly different from a standard payment:
- A registrants pays the amount of the first installment ($50 in this example) immediately when they submit the form
- When the payment goes through, FormSmarts sends the registration details to the destination emails of the form and also sends a confirmation email to the registrant
- The registrant is charged the same amount a month later and again the next month
- FormSmarts notifies form recipients of each installment payment
- You can view a registration and all associated payments on FormSmarts
Note that a payment plan is not a credit or buy now pay later scheme.
Payment in installments are not available with Starter accounts.
Posted on Jun 2nd, 2023 in payment form.
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Tags: payment, payment integration, paypal, paypal form
How to Offer an Early Bird Discount on a Registration Form
FormSmarts allows you to schedule when to end early bird pricing on your event registration forms.
What Is Early Bird Pricing?
An early bird package is a registration package offering a discount, usually available the moment registration opens until an expiration date you’ve specified. These discounts will often range between 10-20% off the standard pricing and offer registrants significant savings. End dates for early bird rates vary from event to event but commonly end between 2 and 3 months before the time of the event.
Adding an Early Bird Registration Package
In this example, we create an event registration form with two registration packages (shown above). The early bird package is available from the moment registration opens until June 1. The standard package (full tuition) is available after early bird pricing ends at midnight on June 2.
- Log in to the form builder and create a registration form
- In the Fields tab of the form builder, add radio buttons or a drop-down list to the registration form
- Enter the pricing rules formatted as shown below
- Click Add Field
Edit the field you’ve just added. Click the button showing a clock face to schedule when each registration package should be available for purchase (enabled) or not (disabled).
Scheduling When the Early Bird Discount Expires
We schedule the early bird package to be disabled on June 2 at midnight.
- Select the Early Bird Field Option
- Set the action to Disable
- Choose Schedule to set the date and time when the early bird discount expires
- Pick a date and time, including timezone (the timezone of your account should be selected by default)
- Click Schedule
We also schedule the standard (full tuition) package to be disabled immediately (As soon as possible option) and enabled at midnight on June 2.
Note how the Scheduled Actions section now lists two scheduled events: the end of early bird pricing and the start of standard pricing.
Advanced Early Bird Pricing Strategies & More
In addition to common event registration forms that offer one or a few pricing options, FormSmarts allows you to make event registration forms with multiple fees. Each fee can have a price that changes at specific dates, as presented above. You could for example offer a limited number of registrations at a heavily discounted rate, followed by early bird registrations, then standard registrations.
Customers may also want disable/enable field options at a specific date and time for other reasons. For example, to disable a choice that is time-limited or no longer available.
We could also use this feature to create an application form that a user must submit within a specific 5-day window, but can start to fill out the preceding week.
Posted on May 2nd, 2023 in event registration.
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Tags: form builder, payment, payment integration, paypal, paypal form
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