Email Notification: Empty fields are showing in notifications created through the new interface

  • KCTRiO
    Asked on May 10, 2016 at 12:43 PM

    I am having the same problem.  Fields hide while I am in Preview, but show in my email notification. here is my form

    https://form.jotform.com/KCTRiO/trio-equipment-loan-request

  • KadeJM
    Replied on May 10, 2016 at 1:25 PM

    Thanks for providing us information about this issue you are having with the Hidden Email Fields in notifications showing and we do apologize about this inconvenience. 

    I did some troubleshooting of this issue and I believe I found the problem since I was able to replicate the same problem on my end. Further testing showed it didn't occur on a new separate test and only your form.

    Email Notification: Empty fields are showing in notifications created through the new interface Image 1 Screenshot 40

    To fix this issue I would suggest that you delete the email notification and create a new one to rebuild it since I found after doing this it is now working correctly on my end.

    Email Notification: Empty fields are showing in notifications created through the new interface Image 2 Screenshot 51

    Email Notification: Empty fields are showing in notifications created through the new interface Image 3 Screenshot 62

  • heidi
    Replied on May 10, 2016 at 5:11 PM

    thanks for the response, but the problem is still there.  when filling out the form, the fields will hide (conditional...if N then hide), but the fields will print in the email notification.

     

  • KCTRiO
    Replied on May 10, 2016 at 5:27 PM
  • Ben
    Replied on May 10, 2016 at 6:05 PM

    Please do note that if you hide the field on your form with condition, it does not mean that the field will be hidden in the email as well.

    The only way for it to be hidden in email is if your fields are empty at the time of submission and you have the "hide empty fields" option turned on, or if you modify your email template to not show the specific field.

    Otherwise they will be shown in your emails.

  • KCTRiO
    Replied on May 11, 2016 at 9:24 AM

    Thank you for the information. So what I'm understanding is, the only way for the field to NOT print in email notifications is for it to be empty and the "hide empty fields" option is selected. I get that.  But when I change the wording and conditions to, "IF Book 2 is unfilled (or blank)" "THEN hide Book 2" when i preview and fill the form, Book 2 is gone. How do I get it to show up for them to leave it blank??

  • Boris
    Replied on May 11, 2016 at 10:58 AM

    I'm not sure what you mean by getting the rule to show up "so that your users could leave it empty".

    I do see why the field "Book 2" is not being hidden in your email notification - it was because the email notification has been customized before, and its data table is no longer "locked". The data table inside the email alert must be "locked" so that our system can figure out in an automated way which row should be omitted from the table.

    Please create a new email notification instead of your existing one. Newly created email notification will have a locked data table, and will work correctly for omitting fields that were empty:

    https://www.jotform.com/help/25-Setting-Up-Email-Notifications

  • KCTRiO
    Replied on May 11, 2016 at 11:14 AM

    When I set the conditions to "if blank hide" it hides the whole field so it doesn't show up on the  preview.  so i've changed it to a pre-selected check box that they'lll have to uncheck (using the HOVER TEXT option to uncheck if they don't want it) which should then leave it blank and hide it, correct? but then the issue is the HOVER hides the text box if the field is "shrunk" and if it's "expanded" then the hover is all the way to the right, where they're likely to miss it. 

  • KCTRiO
    Replied on May 11, 2016 at 11:15 AM

    also, i've been playing with this stuff in the CLONE form I created so I don't mess up the actual form on my website.

    https://www.jotform.com/?formID=61304875083153

    But I guess you can't get to this without having to sign in to my account, so...

     

  • Boris
    Replied on May 11, 2016 at 12:12 PM

    The topic of this support thread was about hiding a field on your email notifications. The problem you are experiencing with the empty field still showing up in your email notifications is not related to the way your show/hide conditions are set up, your form is correctly set up in that regard.

    I have checked your form once again, and I see that the email notification you have created is still unlocked - this seems to be a problem from our system.

    I would recommend temporarily switching back to our old interface, where you will be able to create a new email notification which is correctly "locked" and auto-hides empty fields from email notifications. You can switch to our old interface by appending the parameter &old to the end of the URL when you are editing the form, such as this:

    https://www.jotform.com/index.php?formID=61304875083153&old

    When opening the Form builder with the &old parameter, please create a new email notification by going to Emails > Add New Email:

    Email Notification: Empty fields are showing in notifications created through the new interface Image 1 Screenshot 50

    Select Notifier:

    Email Notification: Empty fields are showing in notifications created through the new interface Image 2 Screenshot 61

    Set up your Sender Email and Recipient Email fields:

    Email Notification: Empty fields are showing in notifications created through the new interface Image 3 Screenshot 72

    When the data table is correctly locked, it will be able to hide empty fields from the email alert. You will recognize the email notification that is correctly locked is it has an "Unlock Data table" button in the old interface - please do not click on that button:

    Email Notification: Empty fields are showing in notifications created through the new interface Image 4 Screenshot 83

    When you are done using our old interface, please save the form, and then replace the &old with &test so that you will be loading our new interface:

    https://www.jotform.com/index.php?formID=61304875083153&test

    Kindly let us know if this resolved the issue you were having with hiding fields in your email alerts.

    I have also forwarded the issue with unlocked data tables being created on our new interface, so that the new interface can be made correctly working with the hiding entries from email alerts. When that issue is resolved on the new interface as well, we will let you know here. Thank you.