Exporting with Nested Forms

Exporting entries with Gravity Forms is easy, and one of the more common requests we get is how to export Nested Form entries. Keeping your form entry data organized and accessible has always been a key part of Nested Forms, and we baked that right into form exports. In this tutorial we’ll walk through the different options when exporting your Parent and Child forms.

Let’s get started.

Overview

In this example, we’re going to look at the form entries for a registration form for in-store gaming events. A user fills out some basic date and time info at the top of the form, adds participants into a Nested Form, and decides on refreshments. Costs associated with the size of the party and refreshments is automatically calculated, and when the customer submits the form they are registered for the event.

Exports with Nested Forms

Exporting your form entries with Nested Forms is similar to exporting form entries for any form. Navigate to Forms > Import / Export and select your form from the drop down. Gravity Forms will show every available field for export, and if the form contains a Nested Form field it will show the Nested Form Field and the child fields.

Nested Form Fields

Before we get started with the export, let’s first talk about how Nested Form Fields export and what each of the options gives us.

In my Parent form, I have a Nested Form Field called “Party Members”.

On the Export page, this field is available as an exportable field.

With that option checked, this is what is exported into our CSV file.

The numbers that display here are the Entry IDs for each Nested Form entry. Numbers on the same row belong to a single Parent entry. This is useful information, but depending on why I’m exporting my form I might want to omit it.

Child Form Fields

Along with the Nested Form Field, I can also export the Child Form Fields.

When these fields are checked, my CSV displays the child field entries as separate columns.

Each block represents child entries that belong to a single Parent entry.

Putting It Together

With that out of the way, let’s get back to exporting the entries for my game night. In my case, I want to export every field from the Parent form and also the child form fields from the Nested Form, but I don’t want to export the Nested Form field—the Entry IDs aren’t import to me for this export.

The export file that I get with these settings is a nice combination of the Parent and Child form values.

Now that’s a good-looking export file!

Taking It Further

For those curious about how my form is handling the registration calculations, it’s a combination of the :count merge tag modifier and GF Copy Cat.

There’s a Number field in the Parent form called “Party Count” that uses a merge tag to calculate the number of child form entries.

That same field then uses GF Copy Cat to automatically copy its value into the quantity sub-field of a Product field.

This is same method you see in practice in the GF Nested Forms demo.

Questions? Comments?

Was this tutorial useful? Do you have questions about Nested Forms exports? Do you want us to invite us to your D&D game nights? We’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below!