Managing Responses

Once your form starts collecting responses, you can manage them directly from the dashboard. This guide covers the global responses page, submissions table, saved views, in-progress saves, individual response views, exports, and email notification tracking.

Viewing responses

There are three ways to access responses:

1. From the sidebar — Open Responses to browse responses across all forms in your Formspace.
2. From the forms list — Click the response count link on any form card, or open the ⋯ menu and select Responses.
3. From the form builder — Switch to the Submissions tab at the top of the builder.

The global Responses page is best for quickly finding recent responses across forms. The form-specific routes open the submissions table for one form.

Global responses page

The Responses page lists responses and in-progress saves across your Formspace. Use it to:

• Search by form title, respondent email, or submission number.
• Use the All responses, My approvals, and Workflow issues preset views in the page header.
• Filter by form, status, workflow status, approval state, assignment, and date range.
• Sort newest or oldest first.
• Open a response in a slide-in panel, or open the full response page.

If approvals are waiting for you, the sidebar and My approvals preset show a count beside Responses. Open a response to review pending and completed approval cards without opening the form builder first.

This page is useful when you know a response exists but do not remember which form it belongs to, or when you need to work through approval tasks across several forms.

The submissions table

The submissions table gives you a spreadsheet-like view of every response. By default, each row is either a submitted response or an in-progress save, and each column maps to a field in your form.

Built-in columns

Every submissions table includes these columns by default:

Column	Description
Status	Whether the row is Submitted or In progress.
#	The submission number, assigned sequentially after submission. In-progress saves do not have a number yet.
Email	The respondent’s email address (if collected via an authenticated access mode).
Received	The date and time the response was submitted, or when an in-progress save was last updated.
Submitted by	The name of the respondent, if available.
Email status	Whether notification and thank-you emails were sent successfully.

Question columns

In addition to the built-in columns, each question in your form gets its own column. The column type adapts to match the field type — for example, boolean fields show checkmarks, and file upload fields display download links.

For repeatable field types such as dynamic matrices and dynamic panels, the collapsed column summarizes the repeated answer. Open its column-header menu and choose Expand into rows to show each repeated item as its own table row with a Row # and one column per child field. Only one repeatable question can be expanded at a time.

Expanded rows remain visually grouped as one submission: built-in fields and questions outside the expanded section span the repeated rows instead of displaying the same value in every cell. Filtering an expanded child column keeps only matching child rows. Sorting an expanded child column reorders rows within each submission without moving submissions relative to one another.

If the form has internal-use pages, panels, or questions, their fields appear in a grouped Internal column section. Responders cannot see or submit those fields, but team members can review and maintain them from the dashboard.

Table settings

Click the Table Settings button (gear icon) to customize which columns are visible and adjust their order. This is especially useful for forms with many fields where you only need to focus on specific data.

If a form has a published workflow, workflow columns are also available. The table can show the workflow version, workflow status, and approval-specific columns. Approval columns are grouped by approval block so related status, approver, decision, and form data columns can be expanded, collapsed, moved, hidden, and exported together.

For workflow setup details, see Workflows.

Sorting and filtering

• Open a column’s header menu to sort it ascending or descending.
• Use the filter option in the same menu to narrow down the data you see. Filter types adapt to the column — text columns support keyword search, while date columns support range filtering.
• Use the response date control beside the view menu to limit which responses are loaded. It defaults to Past 6 months and also supports preset periods, all time, or a custom date range. Submitted responses use their submission date; in-progress responses use their last-modified date.
• Use the adjacent form version control to show responses collected with one published version. When a version is selected, the table columns use that version’s form schema. All versions uses the current published schema.

Saved views

Saved views let teams reuse a submissions table setup for a form. A view can store:

• Column order, column widths, pinned columns, and hidden columns.
• Active sorting and filters, including relative date filters such as today, this week, or this month.
• The repeatable question currently expanded into rows, if any.
• The server-side response date range and selected form version.

Use the views menu above the table to save the current setup as a new view, switch between views, save changes to the active view, duplicate a view, rename a view, delete a view, or set a view as the form default.

The form default view opens automatically for everyone who views that form’s submissions. If no form default is set, the table opens with Standard view, using the standard submissions layout, Past 6 months, and All versions.

Cell selection and statistics

Select a cell, drag across a range, or click the open area of a column header to select a whole column. The status bar summarizes the selection using statistics appropriate to its values, including numeric totals and averages, earliest and latest dates, True and False counts, and unique text values. Press Ctrl+C or Command+C to copy the selected cells into a spreadsheet app.

AI analysis

You can ask the AI Assistant questions about collected submissions, such as:

• “What percentage of people chose option A?”
• “Group responses by department and show the average satisfaction score.”
• “Which choices were most common last month?”

The assistant can inspect your form schema and read only the submission fields needed for your request. It returns aggregate results for analytical questions, and can inspect or summarize individual submitted answers when you explicitly ask it to.

Tip

For best results, ask for a specific calculation or grouping and mention the form or question names you want to analyze.

In-progress saves

If Progress saving is enabled for a form, respondents can save a partial response and continue later. These rows appear in the submissions table with an In progress status.

In-progress saves:

• Can be viewed by form editors from the submissions table.
• Can be filtered out using the Status column if you only want submitted responses.
• Do not have a submission number until they are submitted.
• Do not count toward monthly response limits.
• Do not trigger notification emails, thank-you emails, or PDF attachments.

PDF export and response editing are only available for submitted responses.

Individual response view

Click any row in the submissions table to open a detailed view of that response. The response detail panel shows:

• Submission number and timestamp for submitted responses, or saved-progress status for in-progress saves.
• Respondent email (if available) and when the response was submitted or saved.
• Email notification status — a badge indicating whether notification and thank-you emails were sent successfully, with a tooltip showing full details. In-progress saves do not send these emails.
• Workflow status and approvals — if a workflow ran for the response, the panel shows the run status, approval cards, approval form data, and a workflow run dialog with the run canvas and event timeline.
• Response lock — a padlock icon identifies a response that was locked after an approval decision. Hover over or focus the icon for details.
• Full response data — rendered as an interactive, read-only version of your form with all answers filled in. This includes respondent answers plus any internal-use page data maintained by your team.

Actions

From the response detail panel, you can:

• Edit the response data.
• Save as PDF — use the PDF icon in the panel header to download the response as a PDF file (see PDF export below).
• Open in full page — view the response on its own dedicated page, which also has a Save as PDF button in the toolbar.

These actions apply to submitted responses. In-progress saves are view-only until the respondent completes them, and editing is disabled when an approval decision has locked the response.

Exporting data

You can export your responses as formatted Excel workbooks, CSV or spreadsheet-friendly TSV files for use in spreadsheets and databases, or as individual PDF files for sharing and archiving.

Data export

1. Open the submissions table for your form.
2. Apply any filters, sorting, saved views, or column visibility settings you want in the table.
3. Click Export in the table toolbar, then choose Excel Workbook (.xlsx), CSV (.csv), or Spreadsheet (.tsv) to export all filtered rows in the current view.

The export respects your current server and table filters, sorting, visible-column order, and repeatable row expansion. When a repeatable question is expanded, each matching child row is exported as a separate main-sheet row. Response ID is always the first column, followed by visible table columns in their current order. Use Excel Workbook (.xlsx) for a styled, filterable workbook that preserves native dates, numbers, and booleans. Uploaded files are linked from their filenames, and repeatable sections that are not expanded remain available in separate worksheets keyed by response ID and submission number. Use CSV (.csv) for general data tools and Spreadsheet (.tsv) when spreadsheet apps do not split CSV columns correctly.

You can also export only selected rows by selecting rows with the checkboxes, then right-clicking a selected row and choosing a format from the Export submenu.

Tip

Apply filters before exporting to create targeted exports. For example, filter by date range to export only last month’s responses.

PDF export

You can download submitted responses as formatted PDFs. Each PDF renders the full form with the respondent’s answers filled in, making it easy to share, print, or archive.

When you trigger a PDF export, a progress dialog appears while the PDF is being generated. The dialog closes automatically once the download completes.

Single response

There are three ways to save an individual response as a PDF:

1. From the submission detail panel — Click a row to open it, then click the PDF icon in the panel header.
2. From the full response page — Open a response in its dedicated page and click the Save as PDF button in the toolbar.
3. From the submissions table — Right-click a submitted row and select Save as PDF from the context menu.

Bulk export

To download multiple responses as PDFs at once:

1. Select the submitted rows you want to export by clicking the checkboxes in the submissions table.
2. Click the Download PDFs button in the command bar that appears at the bottom of the screen.

The progress dialog tracks each PDF as it’s generated (e.g., “Generating PDF 3 of 10…”) with a progress bar. Once all PDFs are ready, they are bundled into a single .zip file that downloads automatically. The zip file is named using your form’s title — for example, customer-feedback-submissions.zip — or submissions.zip if your form doesn’t have a title. In-progress saves are skipped because they are not final submissions.

If some PDFs fail to generate, the successful ones are still included in the zip and the dialog reports how many failed.

File naming

Individual PDF files are automatically named using your form’s title and the submission number — for example, customer-feedback-submission-42.pdf. If your form doesn’t have a title, the file is named submission-42.pdf.

What’s included in the PDF

• Header — The form title (or a custom header title, if configured) and the submission number are displayed at the top of each page, separated by a · dot.
• Workflow status — If the response has workflow approvals, the current workflow status is shown in the page header.
• Approval blocks — Completed approval steps are included as natural response sections, with the approval status, reviewer summary, and any configured approval form fields.
• Page numbers — Shown in the footer by default (e.g., “Page 1 of 3”). You can turn these off in PDF Settings.
• Form page breaks — If enabled, each page from a multi-page form starts on a new PDF page.
• Quiz results — If your form uses quiz scoring, correct/incorrect indicators are shown alongside each answer.
• Timeline page — If enabled in PDF Settings, a separate timeline page includes response activity, workflow events, and the PDF generation event. Timeline timestamps are shown in UTC.
• “Powered by Formspace” link — Appears in the footer. Organizations on Pro or Premium can remove this branding in the form settings.

Configuring PDF exports

You can customize how PDFs are generated for each form via the PDF Settings card on the Publish tab. The following options are available:

Setting	Description
Orientation	Choose portrait or landscape page orientation. Landscape is useful for wide matrix questions or many columns.
Right-to-left	Enable RTL layout for languages like Arabic and Hebrew.
Page numbers	Toggle page numbers in the footer on or off.
Form page breaks	Start each page from a multi-page form on a new PDF page.
Timeline page	Include or exclude the response activity and workflow event timeline page.
Header title	Set a custom title for the PDF header. Leave blank to use the form’s title.
Margins	Adjust the top, right, bottom, and left margins (in mm).

Changes take effect the next time a PDF is exported — you don’t need to re-publish your form.

Language and RTL support

PDF exports are rendered from the submitted form response and support the same response content shown in the dashboard. Enable Right-to-left in PDF Settings when exporting responses for RTL languages such as Arabic or Hebrew.

Emoji characters are rendered as images in the PDF so they display correctly across viewers.

Troubleshooting images missing from PDFs

Formspace loads images with anonymous cross-origin access so it can resize large images before adding them to a PDF. The PDF rendering service also adds its own request and signature headers. This can cause the browser to send an OPTIONS preflight request before downloading an image, even when the image URL works when opened directly in a browser.

If an externally hosted image is missing from a PDF, its server must support anonymous CORS requests and allow the headers requested by the preflight. A typical configuration is:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: *

The image’s GET response must include a matching Access-Control-Allow-Origin header, and the OPTIONS response must allow GET and the requested headers. Access-Control-Allow-Origin by itself may not be sufficient. If the image host does not support these CORS requirements and you cannot change its configuration, upload the image to Formspace or use an image host that supports cross-origin image requests.

Deleting responses

To delete responses:

1. Select one or more rows using the checkboxes in the submissions table.
2. Right-click to open the context menu, or use the toolbar action.
3. Select Delete and confirm.

Caution

Deleting responses is permanent and cannot be undone. The associated data and any uploaded files are removed entirely.

Email notification tracking

If you have email notifications enabled, each response tracks the delivery status of all associated emails.

If your organization is on a Pro or Premium plan and PDF attachments are enabled for those emails, notification emails can include the internal response PDF. Thank-you emails to respondents include a respondent-safe PDF copy without workflow approval details or timeline events.

The Email status column shows at a glance whether emails were sent successfully. Hover over the badge to see details:

• How many notification emails were sent (and to whom).
• Whether a thank-you email was sent to the respondent.
• Any delivery errors that occurred.

This helps you quickly identify if a team member missed a notification or if a respondent didn’t receive their confirmation.

Responses from the form card

You don’t always need to open the full submissions table. The forms list gives you a quick summary:

• Each form card shows the total response count.
• Click the count to jump directly to the submissions table.
• Form cards also show the form’s current status — Live, Draft, Closed, or Live · Draft Changes — so you can see at a glance which forms are actively collecting data.

What’s next?

• Publishing & Sharing — Configure access controls and email notifications.
• Formspace Settings — Manage your organization, domain, and subscription.
• Subscription & Billing — Upgrade your plan to remove branding from PDF exports and more.