Data entered into a form wiped before submitting

[Julie_Nevin]

I have received a support request from one of my organisation’s users, copied below. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Do AirTable forms bug on some browsers, for example?

Other users have used the form and we have received the data.

Many thanks in advance,
Julie

"I have just spent 3 hours filling in the form (Make a Policy Development Request) to have all the information I entered wiped.

this is the 3rd time i have tried to present my proposal on this webpage to have all information wiped. this is highly frustrating."

[ScottWorld · Accepted solution]

That is not an Airtable thing — that is a function of her own device & her own browser. If she spent 3 hours filling out a form, that means that the browser window was open for 3 hours with unsaved changes, possibly while she was doing many other things on her device. All of this takes up memory (RAM). If she leaves a browser window open for long enough while doing other things, the device could run out of memory. In which case, the browser would refresh the window when she went back to it, because it couldn’t hold the information any longer. Refreshing the window would erase all the information that she had typed up so far. This is especially the case on devices with small amounts of memory, like tablets & phones. Airtable forms (along with many other forms on the Internet) don’t autosave while you’re typing. Forms should always be considered “unsaved documents” while you’re working on them.

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Agree with what @ScottWorld mentioned. It’s just timing out for her.

A couple of options:

Copy the entire form with the questions, etc. into Google Docs or Word and write in there. Then copy your answers to the form in one go.

Another options is to use On2Air Forms for Airtable that has a Save As Draft feature so you can revisit as needed and the information is saved.

[Julie_Nevin]

Thanks both. I’ll make a note in the form’s introduction that it might time out and to copy in their work from another document.

[HannesK-ME]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to add that our miniExtensions Form can help avoid these kinds of situations. We have both an "auto-save progress" option, as well as a Save & Continue mode, that can either manually or automatically save preliminary records to Airtable. The "auto-save progress" feature, in contrast, works by saving the user's input in their browser, so they can even close the tab and open it back up again later to complete their submission! Both of these settings can help prevent similar issues.