How to save a form in progress

  • Cemantha
    Asked on June 27, 2016 at 11:22 AM
  • Boris
    Replied on June 27, 2016 at 12:28 PM

    Are you referring to saving a partially filled out form, so that your users can go back and finish filling out that form? If so, we have two possible ways to save a partially filled out form.

    1. You can enable Auto Fill option on your form:

    https://www.jotform.com/help/227-How-to-Enable-Auto-Fill-Feature

    The benefit of Auto Fill is that it is easy to set up, and seamless to the end user - they don't need to do anything special. If they accidentally close their browser, all they need to continue filling out the form is to simply open their browser on the same page (your form), and it will already be autofilled with their earlier response.

    The drawback of Auto Fill is that it is browser specific. Partially filled data is stored in the user's browser, within a cookie. This means that if they use a different browser to re-open the form, or if they clear their browser cookies, they would not be able to continue filling out the form from where they left off.

    2. Second option is to use our session method:

    https://www.jotform.com/help/97-How-to-Save-Forms-to-Continue-Later

    The benefit of session method is that your users can continue filling out the form from any other browser or device, since their partially filled data is stored on our servers. For example, they can start filling out over a desktop PC with Firefox, and then continue on a mobile phone with Chrome.

    The drawback is that this method is much more complex to set up. It requires using two forms - one where we collect your user's email address in order to create their session on the second form, and the second form where they will be able to continue filling it out at a later date. This second form will have to use Page Break tools, as data is saved to our servers every time that user navigates between pages by using the Next/Back buttons.

    Please take a look at the above linked guides for more details about each of these methods, and let us know should you need any assistance along the way while setting it up. We will be happy to help.