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How to Add Save & Continue Functionality in WordPress Forms

If you have complex and lengthy forms, you could be scaring away potential leads. That’s why we recommend adding a save and continue option to your WordPress forms.

The save and continue functionality allows users to save their progress and return later to finish the form at their convenience, without losing their information. This can improve the user experience and increase form submissions.

In this article, we’ll show you how to add a save and continue functionality in WordPress forms to improve the form completion rate.

How to add save and continue functionality in WordPress forms

When to Use Save & Continue in WordPress Forms?

Often, people don’t submit a form if it takes a lot of time to complete. Having a save and resume feature for your WordPress forms can solve this issue.

Save and continue functionality allows users to save their form’s progress and resume filling it from where they left off.

It offers your visitors the flexibility to complete the form whenever they want, as they don’t have to do it in one go. As a result, you can get more form submissions and reduce form abandonment.

The save and continue feature works seamlessly if you have long forms like surveys, questionnaires, or job applications or require many people to fill out the details at different stages in a workflow.

That being said, let’s look at how you can add the save and continue functionality in WordPress forms.

Adding Save & Continue Functionality in WordPress Forms

The easiest way of adding save and resume functionality in WordPress is by using WPForms. It is the best WordPress contact form plugin, and over 6 million website owners use it.

WPForms

With WPForms, you can create any type of WordPress form, including a contact form, payment form, newsletter signup form, and more. It offers a drag-and-drop form builder, which makes it beginner-friendly to use.

You also get pre-built form templates, numerous form fields for customization, and integration with popular email marketing tools and payment collection services like PayPal.

For more information, see our complete WPForms review.

The WPForms Save and Resume addon allows your visitors to save their forms and complete them where they last left.

Note: For this tutorial, we will be using the WPForms Pro version because it includes the Save and Resume addon. However, there is also a WPForms Lite version you can get started with.

First, you will need to install and activate WPForms on your website. If you need help, then please see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can head over to WPForms » Settings from your WordPress dashboard and enter your license key. You can find the key in the WPForms account area.

Enter WPForms license key

After that, you will need to activate the ‘Save and Resume Addon’ by navigating to WPForms » Addons from your WordPress admin area.

Simply click the ‘Install Addon’ button.

Save and resume WPForms addon

Once the addon is active, you can add the save and continue functionality to an existing form or create a new WordPress form.

To start, simply head over to the WPForms » Add New page.

Adding a new contact form in WordPress

On the next screen, you will see pre-built templates for your form. You can enter a name for your form and select a template to get started.

For this tutorial, let’s select the Suggestion Form template. Just hover over the template and click the ‘Use Template’ button.

Choose a form template

Next, you can edit your form using the drag-and-drop builder.

Simply drag any form field you want to add to your form and drop it onto the template.

Drag and drop form fields

WPForms also lets you edit each field in the form.

For example, you can edit its label, add a description, change the order of the choices, make a field required, and more.

Edit form fields

After that, you can head over to the ‘Settings’ tab from the menu on your left and then select ‘Save and Resume.’

Next, click on the toggle for the ‘Enable Save and Resume’ option. This will allow your user to save their form and continue completing it later.

Enable save and resume settings

When you enable this option, you will unlock more settings to customize the save and resume functionality. For instance, you can change the text that is displayed next to the submit button and let users save their form’s progress.

Besides that, there is an option to enable a disclaimer page, which is shown to users before saving their progress. WPForms also lets you edit the confirmation page settings and change the text displayed on the page.

Edit save and resume settings

Next, there are more options if you scroll down. You can ‘Enable Resume Link’ to allow users to copy the form link and paste it into their browsers to resume later.

There is also an option to ‘Enable Email Notification’ that sends the link to the user’s email address so that they can access their form from their inbox.

You can also edit the email text your visitors will see in their inbox and the display message.

More save and resume settings

WPForms also lets you change the notification settings and the confirmation email that people will get when they submit a form.

When you have made the changes, go ahead and click the ‘Save’ button at the top and exit the form builder.

Save your form

Next, you can add your form to any blog post or page.

To start, simply edit an existing page or add a new one. Once you are in the WordPress editor, click the ‘+’ button and add a WPForms block.

WPForms block

After that, select the form you just created from the dropdown menu and publish your page.

The WPForms block will load a preview of your form.

Choose your form

When you are happy with the appearance of your form, go ahead and publish the page.

Now, you can visit your page and scroll down to the end of the form to see the ‘Save and Resume Later’ option next to the Submit button.

Save and resume later preview

When someone clicks on ‘Save and Resume Later,’ they will see a link to the form, which they can copy.

There will also be an option to enter an email address to receive the form link via email.

Message users will see on save and resume

Now, you can also see if someone partially completed their form and used the save and continue option in WPForms.

All you have to do is navigate to WPForms » Entries from the WordPress dashboard and select your form to view its entries.

Select your form to view entries

On the next screen, you can look for entries with a ‘Partial’ status. These are people who clicked the Save and Resume functionality and saved their form’s progress.

The status will change to Completed automatically when your user returns and completes the form.

View partial entries

We hope this article helped you learn how to add save and continue functionality in WordPress forms. You may also want to read our guide on how to customize and style your WordPress forms or see our picks of the best WordPress plugins and tools for business sites.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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