How to Prefill a Form With Manual Prefill

June 18, 2024

With Jotform’s Manual Prefill, prepopulating your form fields with data no longer requires you to go outside the form builder. You no longer need to maintain a spreadsheet for multiple URLs, as the prefilled URLs are saved within your settings and can be shared again when needed. It is also secured as prefilled URLs are saved with unique tokens to display the data.

Adding Manual Prefill

There are no prior settings for Manual Prefill, so go ahead and click the option from the list to add your Prefill items.

  1. In the Form Builder, go to the Publish tab.
  2. Select the Prefill tab from the left menu.
  3. Click on the Manual Prefill option.
Manual Prefill option in Jotform Prefill page
  1. Click on the Add a New Prefill button. This will open the form where you can enter the data for further prefilling.
Add new prefill button in Manual Prefill settings of Jotform Prefill
  1. Fill in all the fields you wish to prepopulate. Once done, click the Create button.
Create Prefill button in Jotform's Manual Prefill settings

Pro Tip

At the top of the page, you can change the “New Prefill” name to your preferred label. We suggest to rename it with the name of the user.

Managing Multiple Manual Prefilled Items

Once the prefilled items are created, you can now go ahead and send them or copy the links.

If you want to manage multiple prefill items, select them from the list, and you should see the following buttons:

  • Download — You can download all prefilled items in a CSV file.
  • Send Invitation — Click this button to send the prefilled items to their designated recipients. As noted below, you can only send up to 5 prefilled items at a time.
  • Delete — To delete the selected prefilled items. This cannot be undone.
How to Prefill a Form With Manual Prefill Image-1

When you click the Send Invitation button, a popup window will appear which automatically fills the recipients with the user’s email address. You can change the recipient(s) if you want to. You can also optionally add a message. Once ready, click the Send Invitation button at the bottom of the window.

Send Invitation in Manual Prefill of Jotform Prefill

Note

You can select all Prefilled URLs, but you can only send an invitation to up to Five (5) people at a time. Selecting and sending more than this number will display an error message.

Managing Individual Manual Prefilled Item

On each Prefilled URL, clicking the kebab or 3-dot menu will allow you to do the following:

  • Edit Prefill — To edit the entries for the prefilled item.
  • Send Invitation — If you wish to send the prefilled URL individually or resend it if the user lost the previous invitation.
  • Copy URL — Copy the prefilled URL. It’s useful if you wish to send the prefilled URL manually.
  • Rename — If you want to change the name of the prefilled URL.
  • Duplicate — To create a copy of the prefilled item.
  • Delete — To delete the prefilled URL.
Prefill item options in Jotform's Manual Prefill settings

Changing Permission for Invited Users in Manual Prefill

By default, users can edit the pre-filled data. If you do not want users to edit the data, you can change the permission from Can Edit to Read Only. Click Can Edit and then click on the Read Only option, as shown in the image below.

Change permission for Manual Prefill item in Jotform Manual Prefill

Manual Prefill supports the following fields only:

  • Full Name
  • Email
  • Address
  • Short Text
  • Long Text
  • Fill in the Blank
  • Phone
  • Number
  • Date Picker
  • Time
  • Dropdown
  • Single Choice
  • Multiple Choice
  • Scale Rating
  • Spinner

If you are curious about what else you can do with the Prefill, we suggest you check out the following page: Pre-populate Form Fields with Jotform Prefill.

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