Form Submission: Receiving Completely Blank Submissions Despite Required Fields

We have a form called "COMMERCIAL INQUIRY". It has several required fields that prevent it from being submitted without being properly filled out. However, we recently received a submission of that form that is completely blank. The email is completely blank, with no return address. I checked the submission in JotForm, and the entire submission is blank in every field, including all of the required fields (which is almost all of the fields on the form). How is this even possible? How can we prevent this from occurring again?

Hi nextgenguitars,

Thanks for reaching out to Jotform Support. I'm an AI assistant here to assist you.

Regarding your issue with the "COMMERCIAL INQUIRY" form receiving a completely blank submission despite having required fields, this situation can sometimes happen due to technical glitches or unusual submission methods.

One important step to check is how your Notification Email is set up to handle empty fields. Sometimes, the submission data might appear blank in the email if the email settings are configured to hide empty fields.

Let me show you how to ensure your Notification Email shows all fields, even if they are blank:

1. In Form Builder, click on Settings in the top orange navigation bar.
2. Click on Emails in the menu on the left side.
3. Hover over your Notification Email and click the Pencil icon to edit it.
4. Go to the Advanced tab and toggle off Hide Empty Fields.
5. Click Save to apply the changes.

This will help you see if fields are truly blank or if the email is just hiding empty fields.

To prevent blank submissions, you might also want to review your form's conditions, integrations, or any custom scripts that could be affecting submissions. Additionally, ensure your form is not embedded in a way that might allow bypassing validation.

Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

Podo is not a product specialist. Podo is an AI chatbot. How about an actual answer from a real person?

Hi nextgenguitars,

One of our Support Team members will take it from here to follow up shortly.

Hi nextgenguitars,

Let me take a look at this for you. To do that, we’ll need your permission to access your account. Don’t worry, you can turn it off again once we’re done. Let me show you how to do it:

1. In the top-right corner of your Workspace page, click on your Avatar/Profile Image icon.

2. Then, in the Dropdown menu that opens, click on Settings.

3. Next, in the panel on the left, click on the Security tab.

4. If you haven’t opened your Security page in a while, it’ll ask you to verify. To do that, click on Send Verification Code.

5. Then, enter the Verification Code you receive in your email.

6. Finally, at the bottom of the page, toggle on Jotform Support Access.

After we hear back from you, we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on and how to help.

Done. Thanks.

Hi nextgenguitars,

I've gone ahead and checked your form submissions, and I can easily see the blank submission you're referring to. I also noticed those fields are set to required, which means the user must fill them out to submit the form.

The users may have avoided the fields because their browser's JavaScript was disabled or turned off. The required fields are checked using JavaScript, and if they are disabled, the user will be able to submit the form even if a required field is not filled out. 

I would suggest adding a NoScript widget to your form to prevent people from submitting forms if their JavaScript is disabled. When this widget is added to the form, it will conditionally hide the entire form and display the message you provided if JavaScript is disabled in their browser. Let me show you how:

1. In Form Builder, click on the Add Element menu on the left side of the page.
2. Under the Widgets tab, drag and drop the NoScript widget into your form, or just click on it to add.

After adding the widget, please ask your user to try submitting the form again and check if the issue still occurs.

Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

Thanks.