Reading what people sent you

Every form submission that ClickWhale stores ends up in one list, newest first. It's the safety net behind your inbox: if a notification email goes missing, the answers are still here.

Only stored submissions appear here. A form with Store in database switched off and a working email address leaves nothing behind. It was only emailed. If you want a copy you can come back to, switch storing on. See Building a form.

The overview

One row per submission, most recent at the top:

Click the name to open the submission. There's no search, no filter and no paging. Every submission from every form is on this one page. On a busy site that gets long, and deleting what you've dealt with is the only way to keep it manageable.

The Name column follows the form's current name, including on old rows. Rename a contact form and last year's submissions are relabelled with it.

One submission

The detail page is a plain two-column table: the field's label on the left, what the visitor typed on the right. Titles are skipped. They were never inputs.

An attachment shows as a file name only. The file itself travelled as an attachment on the notification email and was not kept, so if attachments matter to you, the form needs an email address as well as database storage.

The answers themselves are stored encrypted in your website's database, and only decrypted when this page is opened.

Deleting

The bin on a row removes that submission (the row and every answer in it) immediately and for good. There's no bulk delete, no undo and no bin to recover it from, so read a submission before you clear it.

Retention, and what not to collect

ClickWhale never deletes a submission for you. Whatever arrives stays until someone removes it. A contact form that accumulates three years of names, addresses and phone numbers holds personal data you're responsible for.

A workable habit:

• Decide how long you actually need them. For most contact forms it's "until I've replied", plus a little. Put a reminder in your calendar and clear the list on a schedule.
• Don't ask for what you don't need. Every extra field is data you now have to look after.
• Never use a form for anything sensitive. Health details, identity numbers, payment card details, passwords. A website contact form is the wrong channel, whatever the fields let you build. Ask people to send those another way, or don't ask at all.
• Say what happens to the data. Use the form's Confirm checkbox to link to your privacy statement, so the visitor agrees to something specific rather than to nothing at all.

Getting them into a spreadsheet

There's no export button. If you need submissions as a spreadsheet (for a mailing, a report, or to hand a form's results to someone else) ask ClickWhale support and we'll produce one for you.

Common issues