Form Limit Message

I would like to add a form limit that prevents more than one entry per email address.  This field appears on the first page of the form.  However, my form is rather long and it seems the check for the form limit doesn't occur until the submit button is clicked.  Is there any way to have it check the limit on the page the field exists?  I can't have my users complete this long form only to be told they can't submit it after they have done all the data entry.

In order for you to prevent more than one entry per email address, please do as follows:

1 - From the form builder, have your form in edit mode, click on Preferences, then click on the Form Limits tab, as shown below:, change the Unique Submission option to Loose Check or Strick Check, click Close Settings button when done:

Inside this guide you will find a detailed step by step instructions: http://www.jotform.com/help/64-How-to-Set-Unique-Submissions-on-a-Form.

To allow your users to save and continue later, since this is an extensive form, please follow this helpful guide: http://www.jotform.com/features/save-and-continue/.

Let us know if we can further assist you.

Hi Aury,

Yes, I know how to set the limits.  That was not my question.  My question is about when the criteria for the limits is checked.  In testing, I had to complete the entire form and click "Submit" before it told me that the email address had already been used.  I would like to know if there is a way to have the limit checked earlier as I don't want people to complete the entire form only to be told their email address has already been used.  Essentially, this means they would have to fill out the form again.

I already have the Save Forms to Continue Later function in place, but unavoidably there are people who don't get the email (spam), don't remember they got the email, or can't find the email.  Thus, they try to start the application again and that is when we end up with duplicate records which is what I am trying to avoid by using form limits.

I hope this helps to clarify my issue.

Thanks.

To my understanding, you would like to check if the email address entered by form submitters is still available to use, is that correct? and you would like to have it validated without going any further within the form or finishing the form. What you need is something that validates the availability of the email and a prompt saying that it is available or not after him entering in the email address field. 

Unfortunately, this is not available within JotForm. You can try to get the email address used on your form from the submission page. You can then save it within a database. Then, you can download the form's source code. You would need to have some extra coding to validate the email address entered on your email address field because you would need to compare it with the existing email address present on the database you created. I would recommend for you to hire a developer to work on this and we would like to apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you.

Hi Mike,

Ok.  Thanks for the response.  I thought that was the case, but I wanted to make sure.

I would like to add this as a feature request.  It just doesn't make sense for a person to spend time completing a form only to be told it cannot be submitted.  It would be much better if they found out immediately so they could take other steps to get their form correctly completed (in our case it would be to contact us to get their edit link).

You could have an initial form that only checks for the email address and small amount of other information then have the users redirected to your form if they are a new entry.  You would use the previously stated form limits that are evaluated when the form is submitted.  However, if the email address is a new one, your thank you URL would be the long form:

http://www.jotform.com/help/38-Redirecting-Users-to-a-Different-Page

So one validation form and one new entry form.  The error for the validation form would be related to contacting you for the edit link and new addresses would get the application form.  Other than that, I do not believe we will be able to add the ability to query submission data within the form.