Auto-responder / "TO" field issues

I too am experiencing issues with Contact 7 today that I never faced for the past few years I used it. I am now getting the following error in the TO field today, where it never showed up as an error for the past few years I used this plugin. The plugin now has issues with the [recipient]. I provide the visitors with a drop down list of multiple email recipients, so I can’t specify a singular name in this field. Why is this error popping up for the first time? Could this be a plugin glitch that has surfaced this week and requires an update from the developer?

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To [recipient]

This field has syntax errors.

Add me to the list with this error, starting today after the update.

@auralsun

This form features an auto-responder with “[e-mail]” configured as the “TO” field.

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?It’s important to realize that when a from gets submitted you are sending a regular email but you are doing it from WordPress via PHP. Just like normal emails your from email needs a valid To: From: and Subject: field.

??CF7 gives me the error message “This field has syntax errors” unless I make “[e-mail]” a required field.

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?This is because the form user may not supply this value. Then you would be trying to send an email without a To: field and the CF7 email sending process would fail. Your form users would then a see “Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact the administrator by another method.” message. That is likely to confuse many people submitting your form.

?I don’t want to make “[e-mail]” a required field because I only care about using the auto-responder for users who actually input their e-mail.

If you make it a required field they will get an error message which explains the need to input that field. This is going to be far less confusing than the big red “Failed to send your message.”

@bigfeat:

Assuming your plug-in is behaving the same way as mine, you should be able to clear up the error by making “[recipient]” a required field.

@bigfeat & @tamityville – As per the Forum Welcome, please post your own topic.

Posting in an existing topic and taking over the original posters question is generally considered inappropriate. Added to which, your problem – despite any similarity in symptoms- is likely to be different.

@buzztone:

I think I understand what you’re saying. If that’s the case, then it would make sense for CF7’s developer to include a separate module for auto-responders, no?

As it currently stands, it seems that it’s impossible to configure an auto-responder that passes CF7’s configuration validation unless the e-mail field is required. Ideally, I’d like to keep the e-mail field optional and to send an auto-response to my users in the event that they input an e-mail.

I’d like to keep the e-mail field optional and to send an auto-response to my users in the event that they input an e-mail.

If you do that your form users will see a big red error that is likely to confuse them if they don’t supply that field.

By the way, that has always been the case, so many of your form users would have been seeing that error.

The CF7 Validator is now letting you know about the problem that your form users have been seeing.

@buzztone:

My form works fine regardless of whether the user inputs an e-mail address. If the user doesn’t enter their e-mail, my client receives a notification e-mail and the user doesn’t receive an auto-response, as intended. If they do enter their e-mail, they receive an auto-response and my client also receives a notification e-mail.

In other words, CF7 is reporting a configuration error despite the fact that everything is working as intended, unless there’s something I’m not understanding?

Understood – I’m sure Takayuki will be willing to consider this use case in the next update.

As short term fix you could try adding an extra valid email address in the To: field of ‘auto-response’ Mail section – e.g. To: [e-mail], [email protected].

@buzztone:

Thanks a bunch for the help. Unfortunately that workaround isn’t working for me either — it seems that as long as [e-mail] is included in the TO: section (and [e-mail] isn’t a required field), the form won’t pass configuration validation.

I sent Takayuki an e-mail with a link to this thread. Hopefully he will be able to push out an update into a future version.

Thanks again!

When the ‘e-mail’ field is left blank, the To field ([e-mail]) becomes empty, then the Mail (2) fails to send. This is the fact, so the validator gives an error for it. The validator is working correctly as I designed.

You can just ignore the error if you don’t think it’s a problem for you.

Takayuki Miyoshi, the select drop down dynamic email recipient no longer works.

If you follow this tutorial: https://contactform7.com/selectable-recipient-with-pipes/ – verbatim, you get ‘Syntax error’ in the to field in the back end (if you put any variable with brackets), and when trying to submit the form, an error occurs and the form does not send the message.

What is the work around here?

Just as a note for [email] mailtag Syntax errors ONLY showing on the autoresponder ‘Mail(2)’ part of the mail setup tab/page.

I was somehow using [text* UserEmail id:UserEmail] (please note the use of [text*] NOT [email*]) as my forms Email field and this was causing the above ‘Syntax Error’.

It did NOT find an issue when using the {UserEmail] (text* type) in the ‘REPLY TO:’ field however, and this caused me a bit of searching to fix.

Hopefully this helps someone.