I have developed a working site for a company I work for and it is published but I am having consistent problems with the FORM created in Elements. It comes down to two. problems. First, the emails are not making it to the intended email address and instead are coming into the cpanel user email address on the server no matter what I try to do. The emails are failing to be sent through PHP to the right email server or something in the email packet is causing it to fail and get thrown into the user email default for the website errors. Is there a specific PHP file Elements publishes that it uses to process the PHP email? If I can find the right PHP configuration file I might be able to figure out the problem however I have looked and it is not contained in the folder with that particular website page. Second issue, Is there a way to put the return address for the submitted form to be the email the person typed into the email field on the form,. so that when we respond to the email it will be sent to them and not back to our address again? I am a very frustrated user and the web hosting company can not figure it out either so I am having to dig into the basic components of how this email is being sent to find where the failure is. HELP, please!!
Thanks for the detailed message. I totally understand your frustration, especially when everything else on the site is working and the form is being tricky!
Can you share your project file via Elements Cloud with us?
You can send the link privately to forumsupport@realmacsoftware.com
Don’t worry, we’ll get this figured out.
I’ll get @ben to take a look at this with me and we’ll dig into what’s going on behind the scenes with the form and email sending.
It does sound like the messages are being processed but not routed correctly, which might be something to do with the way the PHP mailer is being handled on your server — but we’ll go through it step-by-step with you. We can also make sure you’re able to set the correct “reply-to” address from the form, so responses go where you want them to.
We’ll do everything we can to help get this sorted ASAP.
More soon!
Link was sent to the forumsupport@realmacsoftware.com and thank you I need the help.
Could the solution here be to have a FROM e-mail (the e-mail address from which the e-mail is sent), as some SMTP services only allows sending through specific e-mail addresses? I think the to-email field is also used as the from-email address currently.
Sorry if not correct for the situation, just have that issue myself, and it sounds like the same thing happening (not being sent / getting through).
Thomas you and I think along the same lines and both the From and To in this form are set to the same email address. When I change either to something different and the y do not match exactly the form fails completely with an error and never gets sent then.
Are you able to set the from-e-mail within Elements?
The FORM container lets you set the from for the email yes but it has to match the TO email currently or the form fails completely. I am thinking this is PHP processing problem and that is why I am trying to dig into the PHP Config files to see.
I can’t find the from e-mail in my form container’s settings:
I was thinking that the login username often can be the e-mail address used as from-email, but at least it doesn’t work that way. I figure out my forms get the from-email automatically from the field called to-email.
Exactly that is what I have found also but if your username does not match the To Address then you get a consistent error on your form and it never sends. Atleast that is what has happened every time because I though maybe the username could be the admin user for the webiste and the to be the email I want it to go to but it fails when I set it up that way.
Yes, I see.
For my first forms I’ve used a SMTP service called brevo.com, and my username there is my e-mail address, but other services may give you a username instead (not neccessarily the e-mail). That’s one part of the problem. But even if I should make a separate account with another e-mail as username there, the form in Elements still uses the to-address as the from-address.
I’m too new to Elements, so I haven’t tried to find the PHP-file yet, but I’m a developer, and capable of doing things. However, I think the simplest solution (and my recommendation) is the form settings to get different fields:
- from e-mail (the e-mail you with to send from)
- to e-mail (the e-mail you want form data sent to)
- reply-to e-mail based on the user’s input
I’ve taken a look at your project and the thing that jumps out straight away is the Host name. I’m wondering if this is the issue…
Host usually starts with “smtp” so it seems strange you have just put in your domain name in there. Can you double check these details? what do you use in your email client?
If there is an email field in the form, it will automatically set that as the “reply-to”. So that should be working for you. However, I notice on one of your forms, it’s using an uppercase “E” for Email, can you try switching this to “email”.
Don’t do this, there should never be a need to try and edit the internal php files.
We’re also working on an update to the forum component as we speak to make it more robust and offer better error checking and reporting.
We’ll get to the bottom of this and get it working, I’m sure of it!
Try the above suggestions and report back!
Subject field still has no effect on received emails and I dont think To Name does either
Dan,
I made the suggestions you showed and the lowercase e on email now allows the reply to to be the email typed in on the form so thank you for that. However I tried switching the host to numerous variations that show up int he domain registry records but the only one that works at all is the tocoprinting.com so not sure about that. The email is handled by Microsoft Exchange so may need to dive a little more into the SMTP hosting name. I am fairly familiar with PHP language and have worked with it before so I know I will not mess something up too much. LOL. So where do we go from here while I try to research the proper host name?
Also how do you get the subject line to change from New Form submission? I got it to change on the contact page somehow but it will not change on the quote/JOb submission form?
I have a hunch that Microsoft Exchange is causing the issues here, after a little research I found out the following that seems applicable in this scenario:
“Reply-To” headers might be ignored: Exchange sometimes rewrites headers or ignores Reply-To if it thinks the message is spoofed or malformed.
Defaulting to the server mailbox: If Exchange can’t determine where to deliver the message, it might send it to a default mailbox or even discard it silently. This might explain why the form emails are going to the default address.
Can you check the Exchange server logs? or ask your admin to see if it’s filtering or rewriting anything?
From your forum post last week mentioning GoDaddy, if you purchased a Microsoft 365 email plan from them, they use Proofpoint for email spam protection and other filtering.
Your MX records are pointing to Proofpoint so I imagine you have a complex mail setup that’s preventing outgoing mail to be sent from the form.
Usually for Microsoft 365 email users, there’s a setting in your 365 admin panel where you have to enable SMTP auth for the email user and you have to use Microsoft’s SMTP server for the host in order to get the SMTP auth working, but since GoDaddy pairs 365 with Proofpoint, I’m not sure if there’s more to it (for example you might have to use Proofpoint’s SMTP server.)
I don’t believe this is any bug in Element’s form code, so wouldn’t recommend trying to mess with the PHP code as @dan mentioned. I think you just need to work out the correct outgoing SMTP details to enter in the form settings, and make sure you’ve got SMTP auth enabled in your Microsoft 365 admin panel for the email user.
This is all stuff GoDaddy should help you with, but GoDaddy isn’t known for great customer service, so your milage may vary and you may need to ask for escalation.
If you can’t get it sorted we can do a Zoom call to try and live troubleshoot. If you want to do that just let me know.
Dan I am starting to think you are absolutely right about Microsoft being the problem. I have just dived some into the Microsoft Defender and it is just simply too much protection to the point that things you want to happen can not happen. I will keep diving and maybe I can route these forms through a different SMTP server just to get them delivered correctly.
I still think we need to have a from-email setting, as today, the to-email is being used as the sender address - no matter which SMTP and provider.
But I can also confirm Exchange and different hosts does complicate the setup. You can use brevo.com for SMTP for free until 200 outgoing e-mails every day, I think, but there are a lot of good SMTP providers out there.
I also tried Gmail, and that also worked fine, but The simplest is to have a good SMTP provider.
I think Elements is great in all regards - I just think you always need to be able to set the from address on a form - because different providers of SMTP have different requirements and limitations.
So an update now after trying to implement the brevo.com solution the form is non-functional completely. I even tried restoring it to the way it was when it was sending the emails to the wrong place and that does not work at all either. What if I designed a contact page in RapidWeaver and did some maneuvering to get the page loaded with the rest of the elements site? I need a solution that works and I know how to get it working on a Rapidweaver page. Would that possibly work?
Profile - dan - RapidWeaver Support Forum so is my above idea a solution you think or can you help me figure this out?