What is a private key and where can I get it?

in the submissions page, I can't see submissions, because it always pops up a small page asking me to enter private key? would you please tell me where to get this key? sooooooo annoying Private Key Wizard X

Upload Your Private Key

Your private key will never be sent to Jotform servers.

It will saved in your browser local storage

until you logout Jotform, so you don't have to re-enter it.

The Private Key is part of the Private and Public keys collection where the public key is shown to all and the private key is known only to you.

When you create an encrypted form, the private key is given to you to download it. This file should be in your Downloads folder if you have not moved it, or saved in some other location.

My colleague Mike has given a nice explanation of how you can find it in this thread: Unable to view the information submitted via an encrypted form?

Please note that if this key is lost:

1. We can not restore your data since it is encrypted with the public key of the RSA algorithm which can only be decrypted using your own private key.

2. We do not store nor make a backup of your private keys

3. You will need the private key for the matching public key, so each time you create an encrypted form, unless you upload the previous public key, you will need to save that same private key (of that form) next to the other private keys.

4. The only way to get the data back would be to ask the people that have filled out the forms to submit them again (either after getting a new key or after removing the encrypted forms feature).

Now what I would suggest is to actually remove all encryption from your forms. In most cases, and please do not get me wrong, but if you are not sure of the option, it is better to avoid it and in a case such as the encrypted forms, this is definitely the best approach because otherwise you might not be able to restore your data at some other time (for example if you remove or delete the private key, there is a drive failure etc).

If you do need this option, then I would recommend storing the keys in the specific place where only you can get to it (them) and have it in multiple places.I hope that this helps, but please feel free to ask any additional questions and do let us know how it goes with your private keys.