Field Settings

Configure the settings every Elzo Forms field shares: label, required, help text, width, identifiers and admin options.

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Every field in an Elzo Forms form has four settings tabs: General, View, Logic and Admin. This page covers the settings that all field types share, and what each of them changes on the form and in the stored submission.

Settings that belong to one field type — options, Text variants, file limits, slider bounds — are described in Field Types Overview.

Open a field

  1. Open the form in Forms.
  2. In the Form Data box, open the Fields tab.
  3. Click a field header to expand it.
  4. Change the settings, then update the form.

The field header summarises the field without expanding it. It shows the field’s position, its type — for a Text variant the variant itself, such as Email or Date — its title, and markers for the settings that most affect behavior: the width in brackets when the field is narrower than full width, [?=] when conditional logic is on, and * when the field is required.

Each header also has buttons to duplicate and delete the field, and a drag handle for reordering. Expand all and Collapse all above the list act on every field at once.

General tab

Type

The field type, shown as a button with the type’s icon and name. Clicking it opens the same list of field types as Add Field, with the same search and keyboard navigation.

Choosing another type replaces the type-specific settings below and keeps every setting the new type also has, including values you have not saved yet. Switching between Select, Radio and Checkbox therefore preserves the option list.

The Text variants — Email, Phone, Number, Date, Time, URL and Password — are chosen here as well. There is no separate subtype setting: switching a Text field to Email is a type change like any other.

Label

The text shown above the field. Leave it empty and no label is rendered — useful for a search box or a single-field form where a placeholder is enough.

The label is also stored with each submission, so it is what identifies the field in the Submissions screen and in notification emails. Where a title is needed and the label is empty, Elzo Forms falls back to the placeholder, then to Field #ID. That fallback is also what validation messages use, so a field with no label and no placeholder produces errors like “Field #1712… is required”.

Write labels that describe the expected value: Email address, Company name, Project details.

Required

A required field must have a value before the form can be submitted. It is marked with an asterisk on the form, checked in the browser, and checked again on the server.

Required is not available on Content and Button fields, which never submit a value.

Note: when a required field is hidden by conditional logic, the requirement does not apply. Elzo Forms skips fields the conditions hide, so a hidden required field does not block the submission — see Conditional Logic for Fields.

Placeholder and Default Value

Most input types offer these two on the General tab. They look similar on screen but behave very differently.

A Placeholder is a hint shown inside an empty field. It disappears as soon as the visitor types, and it is never submitted. Use it for an example value — label Email address, placeholder name@example.com — and never for instructions the visitor must keep in view.

A Default Value is a real value, prefilled before the visitor touches the field. If they submit without changing it, that value is stored.

How a default value is written depends on the field:

  • Select, Radio and Checkbox take an option value, not a label. A default that is not in the option list is ignored.
  • Fields that accept several values — Checkbox, and Select with multiple selections — take a comma-separated list.
  • Range takes a number, or 2 - 4 for a two-handle range, and clamps it into the configured bounds when the form is saved.

Use defaults where most visitors genuinely choose the same answer. A default on a question that matters — a consent tick, a contact preference — invites submissions that nobody actually answered.

View tab

Text under label and Text under field

These add help text: one line directly under the label, one under the control itself. Both are plain text — HTML entered here is stripped when the form is saved.

Use Text under label to explain what the field wants, and Text under field for what happens with the answer or what format is expected.

Every field type offers both, except Hidden, which renders neither, and Content, which offers only Text under field.

Field Width

Elzo Forms lays fields out on a twelve-column grid, and Field Width sets the width for each screen size in turn: Extra small (xs), Small (sm), Medium (md), Large (lg), Extra large (xl) and Extra extra large (xxl). Each one offers Full (1/1), Half (1/2), Third (1/3) and Quarter (1/4).

Every size also has an Auto setting, which is the default. Auto inherits the width chosen for the next smaller size, so most fields need a width on one breakpoint only. To make a field half width from tablets upward while staying full width on phones, set xs to Full (1/1) and md to Half (1/2), and leave the rest on Auto.

Rows form automatically from the field order: consecutive fields that have a width are placed side by side in one row, and a field left entirely on Auto is full width and starts a new row. To put First name and Last name on one line, give both of them Half (1/2) and place them next to each other.

Field ID, Field Class, Wrapper ID and Wrapper Class

These four settings target the field with your own CSS or JavaScript. Field ID and Field Class apply to the input itself; Wrapper ID and Wrapper Class apply to the block around it, which also holds the label and the help text.

Adding a class is the safe option. Both ID settings replace the identifier Elzo Forms generates, rather than adding to it, so keep each one unique on the page — repeating an ID across two fields breaks the label-to-input association and any script that relies on it.

The same form can appear more than once on a page. The first copy keeps the IDs exactly as entered; in every further copy Elzo Forms appends -2, -3 and so on to all IDs, custom ones included. A script or style rule that targets a custom ID therefore reaches only the first copy — target a class when it should apply to every copy.

Conditional logic is not affected: it identifies fields by their own marker rather than by the wrapper ID, so a custom Wrapper ID is safe on a field that conditions read.

Logic tab

The Logic tab holds a single Conditional Logic switch and the rules that decide when the field is shown. It is covered in full in Conditional Logic for Fields.

Admin tab

Nothing on this tab changes the form visitors see. These settings control how the field appears in the WordPress admin and how integrations address it.

Primary Field

Marks the field whose value identifies a submission. Elzo Forms uses it as the submission title in the Submissions screen and adds it in brackets to the subject of the notification email.

Set it on the field that best names an entry — usually a name, an email address, or a company. With no primary field, Elzo Forms falls back to the first field that has a value, which is rarely the most recognisable one.

Submission Table Field

Adds the field as a column in the Submissions list. Up to three fields become columns. If fewer than three are flagged, Elzo Forms fills the remaining slots with the first fields of the form, skipping the primary field, which already appears as the submission title.

The columns are built from one form’s field list, so they appear when the Submissions screen is filtered to a single form, or when the site has only one form.

Admin Label

An alternative, usually shorter, name used in the admin. It replaces the label in the field header in the builder and is stored with the submission.

Use it when the visible label is a full sentence — a consent statement, for example — that would be unreadable as a column heading.

Field Key

A technical name for the field, used by integrations and by anything that has to address the field by name rather than by ID.

Elzo Forms generates it while you type, from the Admin Label if there is one, otherwise the Label, otherwise the Placeholder. Non-Latin characters are transliterated, the result is slugified and limited to 64 characters, and a numeric suffix is added if another field in the form already claimed it. Type your own key at any time and it stops being generated; clear the box and generation resumes.

Note: a field key is not an identifier you can rename freely. Anything already matching on the old key — a webhook payload consumer, an external integration — will stop finding the field.

Settings not available on every field

Content and Button fields do not accept input, so Required, Primary Field and Submission Table Field are disabled on them. Hidden fields are never required either, and render neither a label nor help text.

Save and test your changes

Field settings affect both what the visitor sees and what gets stored, so a change is only really done once a test submission proves it:

  1. Update the form.
  2. Open the page where the form is published and reload it, clearing the site cache first if the site uses one.
  3. Submit a test entry, leaving required fields empty once to check the validation messages.
  4. Open the submission in Submissions and confirm the stored values and field names are what you expected.

Troubleshooting

The form cannot be submitted and no message explains why

Check for a required field that the visitor cannot see: one hidden by CSS, or placed on a step they have not reached. Also check Checkbox fields for a Min Selections value, which rejects a partial selection — one option ticked when the minimum is two.

Validation messages name a field the visitor does not recognise

The message uses the field’s label, falling back to the placeholder and then to Field #ID. Give the field a label, or an admin label if the visible label has to stay empty.

A default value is not applied

For Select, Radio and Checkbox the default must be an option value, exactly as written on the left of the colon in the option list — not the label. For multi-value fields, separate several values with commas.

Two fields will not sit on one line

Both need a width other than Auto, and they have to be next to each other in the field order. A field left fully on Auto is full width and breaks the row.

Next steps

 
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