Summary
When editing a form, many of the fields you use will offer the same group of settings. This article helps explain the most common ones. If the setting you are interested in is not listed here, then refer to the more specific user guide documentation for the Field Type you are using.
Fields usually offer three Field Settings sections available in the right hand sidebar when a field is selected:
- General
- Appearance
- Advanced
Additionally, it is common for fields to also present a conditional logic fly-out in the right hand sidebar.
The settings most commonly offered in each of these sections are listed below.
General Settings Section
See screenshots below.
Field Label
This is the name by which this field is displayed. The field label is shown on the front-end (that is, displayed to people when they fill out a form you have embedded on your site), as well as used to refer to that field within form administration areas where choosing the field is required. Such as for conditional logic, merge fields, or even in the Entries list.
Description
An extended text area used to annotate the purpose or instructions on filling this field. If included, it will be displayed with the form.
Input Mask
Available for Single Line Text fields and Post Custom fields only. When this setting is toggled to on, the form administrator may specify a specific format to be accepted in this field, choosing from standard masks provided or defining a custom one. The field will then provide visual guidance to form users on the expected format, as well as enforce the input format during entry validation.
See this article for more information on input masks.
Maximum Characters
Determines the maximum number of characters that can be entered in this field. Offered for longer fields such as the Paragraph field.
Required
If a field is marked as required, then the form cannot be submitted without it.
No Duplicates
Select this option to limit user input to unique values only. This means that for a form submission to be accepted, the value entered must not already exist in the form entry database for that field.
Appearance Settings Section
See screenshots below.
Placeholder
A placeholder is text shown inside the blank field to help the user know what is expected. If the field is left blank at submission time, the placeholder text is not saved with the entry. That field will be blank in the Entry table.
Field Label Visibility
Choose from the drop down to determine if you want the field label to be shown on the form. If shown, the placement of the label is inherited from whatever you have specified within the Form Settings.
Note: hiding the field label can make it more difficult for users to fill out your form. As visible field labels improve accessibility, a warning is displayed when you activate this setting to hide. See this accessibility article for more details.
Description Placement
Choose where you would like the description to appear, own relation to the input field.
Custom Validation Message
This is a custom message that displays when an attempted entry fails validation for this field. The message appears in red, below the field upon an invalid submission. Note that all fields that are validated will generate a simple, default error message. Use this setting if you wish to customize it.
Custom CSS Class
Add any custom CSS class you have defined if you wish to apply it to this field and override the default style.
Field Size
The choice of small, medium or large affects the width of the entry area for most fields. For a paragraph field, it affects the height. By default, it is large.
Advanced Settings Section
See screenshots below.
Admin Field Label
This is the field label that will be shown within the administrative interfaces. It does not affect what a form visitor would see.
Default Value
The value will be used to pre-populate the field when initially loaded and presented to visitor. If unchanged during form submission, it will also be saved with the Entry. A merge tags marker is also presented next to this field, meaning that merge tags can also be utilized to determine the default value.
Enable Autocomplete
Select this setting to let browsers help a user fill in a field with autocomplete. You can enter a single autocomplete attribute or multiple attributes separated with a space. Learn more about autocomplete in the accessibility documentation .
Enable Password Input
Toggling this setting on means that the text typed in this form field will be hidden to the user with a default “•” character.
Visibility
Controls whether or not the field will be visible to a form viewer. Options include:
- Visible: default option, field shows normally.
- Hidden: this field will be hidden from a form viewer, but will still exist. This is useful when you need the field to execute or be used in some functionality (such as capturing a piece of capture information, or be utilized in conditional logic elsewhere in the form), but do not want the form viewer to put an input here.
- Administrative: the field is not visible to a form viewer and will not add any functionality to the form. It can still affect an entry though in that default values will be captured in the Entry table.
Allow field to be populated dynamically
Checking this option allows data to be passed to the form and pre-populate the field dynamically. Data can be passed via Query Strings, Shortcode, Block Settings, and/or Hooks. See this article for more information.
Conditional Logic Fly-out
Open the conditional logic fly-out and click the toggle Enable Conditional Logic to turn on conditional logic. The logic rules added here will control whether this field is shown or hidden. If disabled, this field will be shown by default. See this article for more information. This fly-out will only be available when fields that support conditional logic exist on the form.
Screenshots
General Section 
Appearance Section 
Advanced Section
