How to Convert Form Entries to PDF and Email Them

If you want to save or share form entries, PDF is a great way to do that.

PDF files are easy to archive and retain their formatting on most devices.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a fully functional automation to convert each WPForms entry into a neatly formatted PDF document.

It’s easy to set up and most of the steps require no coding. You will need an HTML template to make the fillable PDF, but that part is easy since I’ve already created it for you.

Create Your WordPress Form Now

Before we begin, note that this tutorial is aimed at folks who want to automate PDF generation from WPForms entries.

If you want to create a PDF on demand, there’s an easier way—check out this guide on how to print a form entry. That will show you how to convert a form entry to PDF and save or print it.

Assuming you want to automate this, I’ll show you how to print or save your WPForms entries as PDFs, then automatically email them to yourself or your customer. I’ve broken the tutorial down into small chunks, so although it looks complicated, it’s not too challenging!

Before we move on to the steps, there are a couple of other things you need to set up the WPForms integration with PDF.co:

• The WPForms Zapier addon, which makes it easy to connect with 7,000+ services and platforms. Be sure to install and activate the addon before moving on to the tutorial.
• A PDF.co account. I’m using the free trial to demonstrate the integration.
• A Zapier account. You can use the free account to get started, but you’ll need a pro account if you want to generate the PDF and email it, which is the process I’ll show you here.

Now we can start setting up the PDF automation.

1. Create a Form

First, we need a WordPress form. Zapier needs to test the connection to WPForms, so we need at least 1 completed form entry to run that test.

If you don’t have a form yet, you can the Simple Contact Form template to get started. Just click the button in the form builder to import the template.

The form builder will open up with the template already loaded. Go ahead and click Embed to publish the form on your site. You can publish it on a temporary page for now.

Finally, we need to send a test entry so we have some data to work with in Zapier. Just fill out the fields and click Submit.

You should see the entry inside the forms Entries screen.

That’s all we need to do in WordPress for now.

2. Create a Zap

We’re ready to create the automated workflow that will turn our form submissions into PDFs. In Zapier terminology, this workflow is called a “Zap”.

Creating a Zap involves defining a trigger (a new form submission) and an action (generating a PDF). Zapier’s AI Zap creation feature will make it easy to set it up.

Log in to Zapier and you’ll see a field at the top labeled What would you like to automate?

I absolutely love this feature in Zapier! Building a Zap used to take a really long time. Now you can built it using AI with 1 prompt!

For this Zap, I typed in Turn a WPForms entry into a PDF with PDF.co, then email me the PDF.

Zapier’s AI works its magic and creates the Zap, including all 3 steps we’ll need.

Now let’s set up the 3 sections in the Zap. Click the purple Try It button to begin.

New Form Entry Step

The first thing we need to do is set up the trigger, which is a new WPForms entry. I’m going to use a form on my test site to show you how this works.

First, Zapier will ask you to Choose an Account. Select Connect a New Account.

In the popup window, you’ll see a field for your WPForms Zapier API key. This key is essentially the secure password that allows Zapier to retrieve your WPForms entries.

To find your API key, switch back to your WordPress browser tab.

Head to the WPForms Settings page in your WordPress dashboard and click the Integrations tab, which is where you’ll find settings for various third-party services that can connect with WPForms.

Assuming you’ve already installed and activated the Zapier addon, you can click on Zapier to expand it.

You’ll see your unique Zapier API key.

Copy this key to your clipboard. Switch back to Zapier and paste the key exactly as it appears, without any extra spaces.

I made sure to paste in the website URL exactly as it appears on the Integrations page in WPForms.

After entering these details, Zapier will test the connection. If successful, you’ll be able to proceed to the next step and choose the form you want to use.

After selecting your form, Zapier will ask you to test the trigger. This test pulls in a recent submission from your selected form. We created one earlier, so this part will be easy.

Next, I’ll move on and show you how to set up the PDF creation action.

HTML to PDF Converter Step

Now that we have our trigger set up to detect new form submissions, it’s time to define the action that will create our PDF.

PDF.co has an HTML to PDF conversion feature that will convert my form entry into a fully formatted PDF document.

To begin the connection process, Zapier will ask you for your PDF.co API key. You can’t miss it—it’s on the PDF.co dashboard when you log in.

Next, Zapier will ask you to set up the Action for the fillable PDF. This action allows us to provide an HTML template with fields that will be dynamically filled in when you get a new entry.

Zapier will guide you through configuring the specific settings for fillable PDF creation, including the HTML template, output file name, and various PDF settings like page size and orientation.

I found this to be the most challenging part. To help you avoid getting stuck like I did, so I’ll show you how I set mine up.

HTML or URL

You’ll need to select all of the entry fields that will be mapped to PDF.co here. Don’t worry about the formatting.

Template

We need an HTML template that PDF.co will use, so we’ll have to open a new tab to create that.

This looks very complicated at first, and I found the documentation to be quite technical. To help, I’ll provide a template that you can adapt.

First, open up the PDF.co template editor in a new window or tab. Click Create New Template.

Name it Contact Form Entry.

In the template window, you’ll see a window on the left with various scripts and HTML code. Delete all of the code in the template and replace it with my version:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Form Response</title>
    <style>
        body {
            font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
            line-height: 1.6;
            color: #333;
            max-width: 800px;
            margin: 0 auto;
            padding: 20px;
        }
        h1 {
            color: #2c3e50;
        }
        .field {
            margin-bottom: 20px;
        }
        .field-name {
            font-weight: bold;
            color: #34495e;
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Form Response</h1>
    <div class="field">
        <span class="field-name">Name:</span> {{name}}
    </div>
    <div class="field">
        <span class="field-name">Email Address:</span> {{email}}
    </div>
    <div class="field">
        <span class="field-name">Comment/Message:</span>
        <p>{{message}}</p>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

It will look like this:

Keep in mind that I used the fields that are in my entry: Name, Email Address, and Comment or Message.

Save your template and close the tab.

Back in Zapier, refresh the list of PDF.co templates. Select your new template from the dropdown.

Now Zapier knows what we want the PDF to look like.

You will likely want to go back and make the template look more professional. This version is just to help get you started.

HTML Template Data

This field is marked optional, but it’s essential for the field mapping to work. I found the documentation for this quite difficult to follow, so I’ll break it down into small steps here.

Start by pasting this code into the HTML Template Data field.

{
  "name": "{{1. Name}}",
  "email": "{{1. Email}}",
  "message": "{{1. Comment or Message}}"
}

It will initially look like this.

The black circles indicate that the fields aren’t matched to the the WPForms entry properly yet.

To fix that, delete the 1 Name field and use the dropdown in Zapier to select the Name field in your entry. Repeat with the 1 Email field and the 1 Comment or Message field.

Once I finished, my HTML Template Data field looked like this:

That’s it. The difficult part is done!

Configure Remaining Fields

Now the mapping is set up you can customize the rest of the settings to your liking. For example, you can choose:

• Page orientation (portrait or landscape)
• Page size
• Margins
• Background
• Filename

For the last one, I recommend using your WPForms entry ID in the field. This will ensure all of your PDFs have a unique filename.

Finally, test this step and check that there are no errors.

3. Send Your Form Entry PDF via Email

You can decide how you want the PDF to be sent or stored after it has been generated in PDF.co. We can do this in the final step in your Zap.

Here are the 2 most popular use cases I hear from customers

• Emailing the PDF of the form entry, either to you or to someone else. We can set up an extra step in you Zap to send an email with the newly created PDF attached.
• Storing the PDF. This is easy too, although it requires another service. PDF.co doesn’t provide long-term storage. Consider setting up an additional step in your Zap to automatically save the PDFs to a cloud storage service like Google Drive or Dropbox.

We’ll focus on emailing it here since that’s the most popular request I see from customers.

And the good news is that this is the easy part!

The Zap we created has a final step to send an email. It’s easy to set that up. Just make sure that you select the PDF.co PDF URL in the Attachment field.

Test your zap and you should receive an email with your form entry PDF attached.

Don’t forget! Hit Publish in Zapier to turn on your automation.

And that’s it! You’re automated the process of creating PDFs from your WPForms entries.

FAQs on Creating Form Entries from a PDF

We get so many ideas and use cases for converting entries to PDFs. We’ve tried to cover a few of the most common questions here.

Can I create PDFs in the free version of WPForms?

No, you’ll need WPForms Pro to be able to create PDFs from form entries. WPForms Pro stores entries in your WordPress database, and Zapier needs that to be able to retrieve the entry and send it to PDF.co.

You’ll find more details about this in our article on WPForms Lite vs Pro.

If you’re serious about growing our business, upgrading to WPForms Pro is worthwhile investment. The Pro version not only unlocks the Zapier addon but also provides access to many other WPForms integrations.

How many PDFs can I generate each month?

The number of PDFs you create depends on the limits of your PDF.co and Zapier plans. WPForms doesn’t limit the number of entries you can receive, so you need enough capacity to run the Zaps in Zapier, and generate the PDFs in PDF.co.

Can I customize the appearance of WPForms PDFs?

Yes. You can customize the appearance of your PDFs in Zapier. You’ll want to adjust the HTML template in the PDF.co action step to get it looking the way you want. If you’re comfortable with HTML and CSS, this will be a lot easier.

What if I want to generate PDFs for multiple forms?

It’s easy to generate PDFs from different forms. Duplicate your Zap and connect it to the form you need to use. After that, adjust the template to suit the form layout.

Remember that each Zap will count towards your Zapier task limit, so make sure your Zapier plan can accommodate the number of Zaps you need.

Can I automatically send the generated PDFs to my clients?

Yes. After the PDF creation step, another action to your Zap that sends an email to the person who submitted the form with the PDF attached. If you do this, you will probably want to disable your form confirmations in WordPress so the submitter doesn’t receive two emails.

Can I add a file upload to the form entry PDF?

Yes, you can incorporate file uploads into this workflow with some additional configuration.

When a file is uploaded through a WPForms form, Zapier receives a URL to the file. You would need to add an extra step in your Zap to download the file, and then use PDF.co’s PDF merge feature to combine the downloaded file with your form data PDF.

If this sounds tricky, you could include the file download URL in your PDF instead. That way, the recipient can download the file themselves.

Create Your WordPress Form Now

Next, Export Form Entries to CSV or Excel

Did you know that you can export form entries in different ways?

• Check out our tutorials on how to export form entries to CSV or how to export form entries to Excel.
• Learn how to automatically export form entries to Google Sheets.

Ready to do more with your forms? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes powerful entry export options and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

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