Save and Continue Later, also known as Autofill or Continue Forms Later, offers ways for your form fillers to save their partially filled-out form. It is useful for long forms or forms with multiple pages.
Your form fillers can save their draft to their account, copy the draft link, or send it to their email address.
Click the link below to jump to a specific topic of this guide:
- Enable Save and Continue Later
- Customize Save and Continue Later Email
- Discard & Start Over and Continue With Draft
- Save and Continue Later in Jotform Mobile Forms
- View Saved Drafts in Jotform Mobile Forms
Notes
- The incomplete submissions’ data are kept in Tables until overwritten, deleted, or completed. To learn more, see How to View Incomplete Submissions.
- The Save and Continue Later feature does not work with the following elements and widgets:
- Appointment element
- Unique ID widget
- Inventory widget
- Weekly Appointment Planner widget
- Gift Registry widget
- The Save and Continue Later feature will not work when embedding your form using the default script method. We recommend the iframe method if you want the save button to appear when the form is embedded on your website.
Enable Save and Continue Later
- In the Form Builder, select your Submit button’s gear icon to open properties.
- In the properties pane on the right, go to Advanced at the top.
- Finally, turn on Save And Continue Later.
You can set the save button’s label in the Button Text field.
Enabling Save and Continue Later adds a Save button to your form. The button opens a save dialog where your form fillers can choose to sign up or log in to Jotform to save and easily manage their drafts in their account.
Your form fillers can also use the Skip Create an Account link at the bottom of the save dialog to get the draft link or have it emailed to their address.
Customizing the Save and Continue Later Email
Once Save and Continue Later is enabled on your form, you can customize the message for your form fillers if they decide to save their partial data and have their draft link sent to their email.
To edit the email template
- In the Form Builder, go to Settings at the top.
- On the next page, select Show More Options at the bottom.
- Scroll down to Continue Forms Later — ensure that it’s enabled — and then select Customize Save and Continue Later Email.
- Edit the email template on the next page.
Here are the elements you can customize in the email editor:
- Email Subject — The email’s subject line.
- Email Content — The main body of the email. You can edit, format, or style it as you like.
Note: The Continue Form button holds the form fillers’ draft link. Keeping it is highly recommended. - Sender Email — Can be found under the Advanced tab. You can configure it so your users receive emails from your own SMTP server instead of Jotform’s servers.
- When you’re done, scroll down to the bottom and select Save Changes.
Discard & Start Over and Continue With Draft
If a form filler accesses your form while logged in to their Jotform account and the system found an existing draft, they’ll see an option to start over and restart filling out your form or to continue where they left off.
Saving Partially Filled-Out Forms in Jotform Mobile Forms
Save and Continue Later have additional features in Jotform Mobile Forms. It’s built-in on the app and you, as the form owner or assignee, can save multiple submission drafts for forms launched from the main dashboard and viewed directly on the app.
Note
Forms that need to be opened in browsers or require an internet connection, like payment forms, are not supported.
To create a submission draft in Jotform Mobile Forms
- Go to the main dashboard and choose your form.
- Select Fill Out from the bottom menu.
- Partially fill out the form, then select back in the upper-left corner or on your device to open the Save as Draft dialog.
You can also use the save icon in the upper-right corner on forms with Save and Continue Later turned on.
- In Save as Draft, select Save and continue later.
Viewing Saved Drafts in Jotform Mobile Forms
Your drafts are saved in the form’s inbox. To view them
- In the main dashboard, choose your form.
- Select Submissions from the bottom menu.
- In Inbox, choose your draft.
- Choose whether to continue or discard your draft.
Send Comment:
52 Comments:
Hello,
When choosing the "save and continue later" option embeded in the form, the progress in sent on our email adress. Is there a way the person filling the application receive the progress on their adress? So they can easilly acces it later.
I know they have the link, but it would be more easier if they would get an email with the form and the option to continue from there. Thank u!
how can I retrieve my saved items which are no more reflected I my form
How can I use this feature without the pop-up having jotform branding and without you soliciting account set-ups from my users. I understand how the "skip" link works but I want to remove that step and just let users enter their email or get the link.
This is so outdated function!!!! Your customers have asked for abandonment submission for years. Why don't you just make that function available??? There are so many requests made for it and all you do is send people to this pointless function "save your details"...
Does this work if the form is embedded in a website?
Hi,
When using the save and continue later option, we have found that we can't have more than one draft form running at once. Each time we try to do a new one, the old one's data gets erased even with the link given at the end of the draft.
Not sure if we are doing something wrong or if it's just not possible.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi, I am adding in the save for later option to our form. Is there a way that I can also receive a notification when a user starts and saves an application? I know that they can receive the e-mail notifying them of the saved application and the link to continue it, but can I also receive this notification or something similar?
Thank you, Janice
I still cannot see that my user from last year will have the ability to have the form pre-filled when they go to register their child this year. Is there a way? Sounds like they can easily register as a user. And if they do, can we save their input info?
Thanks, LoriAnn
I want to complete an application
Hello,
We have a Silver account and create HIPAA-compliant forms for our Webhosting clients. We like the review answer widget and save-for-later functions. However, we don't like the fact that our clients are asked to create an account to continue filling out their forms. The save your progress screen does not show the skip create an account feature to our clients. We agree that the data should be stored on your secure server, however, we don't want our clients setting up accounts to do the work we're hired to perform for them. That defeats our purpose snd we don't want this to be a deal-breaker for us.
We understand in order to white label this product you have to have an Enterprise account with a minimum of 5 users. We only need one user. Can you customize enterprise-level applications for a single Silver plan user? If so, I do have some suggestions.
Overall, we are pleased with the forms we have created, except for those details listed above. With a few minor tweaks, we will be delighted to refer designing colleagues to your services.
Thank you for your assistance and I look forward to your answer.
Enjoy your day.
Cynthia Bryant
Hello, I may be trying to do something different than most posts I have seen. I have tried reading all of the comments and posts on this subject but unlike the others I DO NOT want the save button to appear at all. I DO NOT want our users to be able to save and finish later. I want them to submit what they have regardless. I have tried disabling the "Continue Forms Later" but the Save button is still at the bottom. When I hit the Save button it then gives me a window that I don't want to see that says "You have a draft of this form. You can continue your draft or discard and start with a blank form" It then give two icons with options "Discard & Start Over" and "Continue with Draft". If it is not possible to eliminate the Save button and this additional window I will have to teach people not to hit the Save button at all but was hoping it could be removed. I found one support ticket that discussed adding some code. I copied and added that code but it still did not remove the save button. If there is not a way to totally remove the button you can just reply here and tell me that. If there is, please see the next paragraph.
Can someone contact me by phone to discuss this please? I wasn't sure if I should list my phone number in this post so if you don't have it, let me know and I can. I appreciate your assistance.
Good day , i would like to remove the create an account pop up when a use clicks save. how can this be done , it should go directly to the screen that appears when a user click skip create account.
Am I right that if I use save and continue later, the user gets a link to come back to her saved information? Is it also true that if I use save and continue later, the user's data is retained and appears next time they open the scholarship application Jotform?
I need a system where the user's data is not saved on the computer, as multiple students will be completing scholarship applications on the same computer. When one students leaves, I want her data to be gone so the next student starts with an empty form.
I do want the student to get an email with a link that will take her back to the data she submitted. I've done this in the past via the starter form and main form method. Now it looks like the new save and continue method will not work for me because it retains student data in the computer.
If it does not work for me, can I use the old method? (the starter form and main form system)
When user try to save our form, they do not have the "Skip Create an Account" option. The only way they can save is to create an account. How come we don't have that option?
Hello There
We want to send out survey forms to our engineers with the work & contact details already filled in i.e. name, address, phone etc.
How can we automate this or do we have to manually enter the data into fixed fields on the form before we send it?
thanks!
Hi there,
Is there a way to skip popup showing?
I just want the customer to "Skip Create an Account". I was intending to have this as an iFrame on my website, so want to make it look like it is completely built-in, and don't want them to suddenly think - what is JofForm? Needs to be only my branding.
Thank you.
Same problem as uchcaz. I can see the SAVE button in edit mode, but not in Preview.
I set this up as described and I can now see a SAVE button in edit mode, but not when viewing the form.
We experience the same problem as bondapp147 - the email goes to our Jotform account and not the user.
Hi, for some reason the "enter the email" functionality isn't working for my form - the email goes to our Jotform account and not the user. Might be due to the fact that we're using the old "2-form" process to enable save and continue. Can you please have a look and advise?
Form 1:
That leads to form 2 (where we need the save functionality):
Thanks!
Why can't I add 'Form Fields' to the Session Email? If a user creates multiple sessions, there is no way to tell one session email from another.
Hello,
Is there any way people can access their saved forms for longer than a 24 hour period?
Thanks,
Lauren
Hi,
Do you need to use both the session parameter method and also enable the continue forms later button for data to be saved or are you good with only using one or the other?
Thanks!
Trying to use translate for forms but no autofill or translating not working can you help Thanks
That is great, thank you very much for coming back to me.
Regards,
Karen
Hi! I have several name fields on my form... Owner Name, Registered Name, Call Name, etc.
They are all being automatically filled with the Owner Name when autofill is used to complete their address, phone, email. How can I keep this from happening? Thanks!!
Is it posable for previous submissions from a jot form to auto fill in future forms.
Foe example if a past submission has the client name and personal details can 5his auto fill the next time they use the form.
Or if a client is regularly submitting the same information like product codes or expiration dates can this auto fill for them next time and they just change if required.
We've tried this and everything saved except the files we ask people to attach. We've tried firefox, chrome, and safari, whenever we leave the pages, everything saved, except files. Can you let us know how to solve it?
Ai-Ting
Continue forms Later - Don´t Work!!!
How can we give our repeat customers the quickest/easiest way to complete new forms? A single customer may purchase 4 or more programs a year, and each program must have its own registration form. Rather than asking our customers to enter their contact info and other personal info 4 or more times a year (every time they purchase a program), how can we make this process as close to 1-click as possible for repeat customers?
how will the URL look like of the form when my customer clicked on it? Which number will you use?
sasa
Your video shows the old way and the new way doesn't show a way to see how long the continue form is enabled - can someone come back a week later, a month later, etc.? Thanks,
How can I stop the form from clearing when the user goes back from PayPal?
When I use the submit button to to paypal, it goes to the first page of my form with all the data cleared
I tried to do put this option in place; however, it did not work?
Very interesting read. We have been using jotform in hundreds of different ways. The list is endless and spans from simple contact us to Incubator Applications!!!
This is undoubtedly the worlds favorite form maker of all times...
Hello to Podo and AT.
Oooh, what did you use for the sticker selection section in that podo sticker form?
I use Jotform for online quoting. There is a nice big (simple) form on my home page that funnels visitors to my site to (hopefully) take a punt and get themselves an instant price on a job with no fear of opening the gates of Marketing Hell and unleashing a horde of suited and booted sales reps.
Good work Jotform,
Adam - N-SURV
in running program,the last section of only textbox data not appear.
i add autofill option,but the textbox data not appear in online.
The auto fill function does not appear to be working now on our form.
I have checked the form is set up properly and auto fill is enabled on jotform but when one of our assessors enters data and then closes the form the date inputted is no longer there.
Is there a way of clearing the data once the form has been finished and submitted?
I went back into my form today and submitted it, but now when I enter the form link I get the previous one that I already completed and submitted.
is it possible to enter previously submitted info?
a) to update months after submitting
b) pasting info from google sheet, then sending form with that info already entered
I don't see the Autofill option listed under Preferences. How do I get this option so that I can enable it?
Just to clarify, does this still save to the database on jotform any partially completed forms? For example, if I had a long form with multiple pages, and wanted to make sure I was collecting even partially completed forms (to determine if people were getting stuck/which questions they were abandoning the form at, etc) would this solution allow me to do this? If not, is there any way I could get partially completed forms to save to the jotform database? Thanks for your help!
It doesn't save your uploaded documents :(
Hi, just to clarify, this will work over a form that has multiple pages right?
Thanks.
Thank you for doing this! This saves the day for us!
great job guys - that previous workaround looked like a complete head ache
Thanks, that solves that problem
Regards
Great
Guys, many thanks!
One more question: Does it work provided you're using the same computer or is there a form ID that the person filling the form should store?
Thanks again!
S
Hi there,
I just wanted to see if I am correct in saying that once this feature is enabled, i could send the form to 100 different people to fill in and each person's form would be unique to the content that they entered?
However, should these people wish to close the form and continue at a later stage, will their info still be there? including there uploads?
and will they be able to click simply click on the primary link they received to access their form that they were previously busy with?
Thanks so much for your time!
Regards,
Ilia