Field Options & Icons

Customising fields within your form

James Sweeney avatar
Written by James Sweeney
Updated over a week ago

Field Icons

Before jumping into the field settings, take note of the field icons located at the top right of your fields.

These will allow you to: Duplicate, Delete, and Move your fields.

Field Options

The Field Options will allow you to customise your fields to suit the needs of your form.
When selecting a field within your form, you will see the Field Options panel open on the left side of your screen.

Let's go over the basic Field Options you will see:

Field Label
The field Label is the name of your field and will let parents know what information is expected to be entered. An example of a field label is 'Contact number' or 'Name'.

Required
The required checkbox ensures that information must be entered into the field before the form can be submitted by the user. This will place a star icon on the field.

Unique
The unique checkbox prevents the submission of a duplicate field value. An example use of this would be to have a unique 'Parent email' field in your form, preventing the user from submitting the form more than once.

Read Only
The read only field prevents a user from editing the value inside of the field.

Validation Message
If you have checked the 'Required' or 'Unique' checkboxes, you will see a Validation dropdown menu appear. This menu contains the message that will be sent to the user if they do not meet the 'Unique' or 'Required' field requirements. You can adjust the default message to say something else, should you choose.

Advanced Field Options

In the Field Options panel you will notice a dropdown menu labeled 'Advanced'. Clicking on this will expand the menu with additional options.

Let's go over the advanced options:

Default Value
Anything entered into the default value section will auto-populate the field when users are viewing the form. This can be useful for complex form systems.

Placeholder Text
The placeholder text will auto-populate the field, much like the 'default value' option. The main difference, is that when a user interacts with the field, the place holder text will disappear. For example; a name field could have 'Please enter full name here' as its place holder text.

Field Description
The field description will appear just below the field and can hold any relevant information you would like to display. Eg: A signature Field with the description 'By signing above you agree to this, this, and that'.

Field Size & Max Characters
Set the width of your field and the maximum number of characters that can be entered.

Format
The format option allows you to automatically format anything entered into the field. An example of this, would be formatting a mobile number field: 9999-999-999.

Field Key
This is a unique identifier for your field. This can be used to reference the field from other fields, or when using conditional logic.

Field Type
This is the type of the field and can be changed to any other field type.

Prepend & Append
The Prepend will appear before the value entered into the field, and the Append will appear after. An example of this would be to enter '$' into the Prepend, representing a monetary value.

Additional Options


Some fields (Like checkboxes and radio buttons) will allow you to add additional options. To do this, you just need to click the 'Add Option' button and name your new option above.

There are also a variety of preselected options available within the 'Bulk Edit Options' menu which can serve to save you some valuable admin time.

Calculations

You can perform field calculations using the calculation option, located under the Advanced Options menu by clicking on the little calculator icon above the 'Default Value' field. For an in-depth guide to using form calculations click here.

Field Specific Options


Most fields have additional options that can add to the functionality of your form. Check out the options below to learn more about what you can build with Formidable Forms.

Section Heading

  • Choose to make the section heading either 'Collapsible' or 'Repeatable'.

  • Repeat Layout: Choose to have a repeatable section display as 'Default', 'Inline', or 'Grid'.

End Section

This field will always be the last field in a Repeatable Section.

  • Repeat Links: Choose to show an icon, text, or both. Change the icon by going to Custom Forms 'Styles' → 'Section Fields' → 'Repeatable'.

  • Add New Label: Choose the text that will be seen in the 'Add' button.

  • Remove Label: Choose the text that will be seen in the 'Remove' button.

Number

  • Number range: Select where you want the number range to start and end.

Phone Number

  • Format: Determine the number format that will be accepted in this field. If you want your users to type a phone number in format 99-9999-999, type this into the format option. You can also use this format option to customise your phone number validation.

Date

  • Calendar localisation: Choose which language you would like your calendar to display.

  • Year range: Pick a start and end year for your calendar.

Time

  • Clock settings: Choose between a 12 and 24 hour clock and set the start and end time for your clock.

Scale

  • Range: Set the range for your scale, which can go up to twenty.

  • Stars: Display options as stars instead of circles.

Embed Form

  • Insert form: Select a form to embed inside of the current form.

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