How to Store and Export WordPress Form Entries
If a contact form’s only output is an email notification, you’re one spam-filter false positive away from losing a submission entirely. That’s why Contactum saves every submission as an Entry in your WordPress database, independently of whether the notification email ever arrives — and gives you tools to review, filter, and export them.
Where Entries Live
Go to Contactum → Entries to see submissions from every form on your site in one place, or open a specific form and click its own Entries tab to see just that form’s submissions. Each row shows the key submitted values plus the date and status; clicking a row opens the full entry with every field’s value in full.
Entry Status
Every entry is one of three states — Unread (new), Read (opened at least once), or Trash (deleted, recoverable until permanently removed). Opening an entry automatically marks it read, so your Entries list works like an inbox: unread items are the ones you haven’t looked at yet.
Filtering and Bulk Actions
Use the filter controls above the list to narrow by form, date range, or status, and the search box to find entries by submitted content — handy when you remember a phrase from a message but not who sent it or when. Select multiple rows with the checkboxes to mark a batch as read/unread or delete them all at once; a large bulk delete asks for a typed confirmation as a safeguard against accidental mass deletion.
Exporting to CSV
From either the global Entries page or a form’s own Entries view, use the Export action. If you’ve selected specific rows first, the export is limited to those; otherwise it exports everything currently in view. Contactum generates a CSV file you can open directly in Excel, Google Sheets, or any spreadsheet tool — useful for reporting, importing into a CRM that doesn’t have a direct integration, or just keeping an offline backup.
A Note on Post Submission and User Registration Forms
If you’re using Contactum Pro’s Post Submission or User Registration modules on a form, a successful submission that creates a WordPress post or user account isn’t also saved as a duplicate Entry — you’ll find that data on the created post or account instead. If the post or account couldn’t be created for some reason (a duplicate email, for instance), the submission falls back to appearing as a normal Entry so nothing is silently lost.
Why This Matters
Email is inherently unreliable as your only record — messages get caught by spam filters, mailboxes fill up, notification settings get misconfigured. Treating your form plugin’s Entries table as the source of truth, and email as a convenience layer on top of it, means you never actually lose a submission even when the email doesn’t show up.