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Troubleshoot HubSpot forms

Last updated: September 19, 2023

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HubSpot forms allow you to generate leads from your website and gather important information about your visitors and contacts in HubSpot. If you're having difficulty with your form behavior or submissions, review the different common issues and the steps to resolve them. 

General troubleshooting steps 

If you are having issues with your form submissions, it could be caused by either the HubSpot form itself or the page that the form is embedded on. To troubleshoot the issue, you can test your HubSpot form:

  • Open the form's standalone page URL in another browser tab. This standalone page does not have any elements that can affect the form.
  • Make a test submission to the form.
  • Check the test submission:
    • If the submission is successful, the issue is likely related to the page it is embedded on. Check with your developer about the possible elements on the page that could've affected the submissions, such as any scripts or attached stylesheets.
    • If the submission was also affected by the same error, contact HubSpot Support.

Troubleshoot common form behavior issues

The following are some common issues you might encounter when setting up your form and the typical steps for resolution. After updating your form, publish and check the form again.

Error Steps to resolve the error 

A field is not appearing on a live form

 Ensure that your updated form has been published by checking the form's standalone page URL in another browser tab.

If some fields are still not being displayed on your form when you add it to a page, it is likely that the form has progressive fields and HubSpot remembers the visitor from previous interactions or testing. Progressive fields are hidden if the visitor has previously filled in the field or if the contact already has a value for the property.

If you want the field to display consistently, add the field as a regular form field rather than a progressive form field. 

Property is not available as a field in the form editor

 

 If a property is not available as a form field, it may be because it is not set up to be shown in forms. To enable a property for display in forms: 
  • In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the top navigation bar.
  • In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Properties.
  • Click the name of the property.
  • Select the Use in forms, and bots checkbox. If your property has multiple options, the Show in forms switch must be toggled on for each option you want to use in your forms.
  • In the bottom left, click Save.

Smart content is not appearing on my thank you page

 You cannot use smart content on a thank you page. When a visitor submits a form and is redirected to a thank you page, there is not enough time for the form to process, and for HubSpot to determine if the contact meets the smart content rules on the thank you page.

You provided unsafe richtext HTML error

 The error You provided unsafe richtext HTML occurs when you've included HTML tags or attributes that are not permitted in your form.

To resolve this error and save your form, check the source code of the rich text areas in your form against the following:

  • Any <script> tags are not permitted and should be removed.
  • Any scripting HTML attributes (e.g. 'onmouseover', 'onclick') are not permitted and should be removed.
  • All URLs in images must start with 'http://' or 'https://'.
  • All link URLs must start with 'http://', 'https://', 'mailto:', or 'tel:'.
  • All link tags can only have 'href', 'target', 'name' and 'rel' HTML attributes.

Troubleshoot common form submission issues

The following are some common issues you might encounter with form submissions and the typical steps for resolution. After updating your form, you can try publishing and checking the form again. 

Error Steps to resolve the error 

Higher number of form submissions than contacts / No contact record created for a form submission

 Form submissions are recorded when the Submit button on a form is clicked and processed. These are some common reasons why the number of form submissions may be higher than the number of contacts created: 
  • The form was submitted multiple times with the same email address. As a result, only one contact was created, but each individual form submission was still recorded. To prevent this, in your form's Options tab, toggle the Always create contact for new email address setting on. 
  • The contacts may have been deleted. If a contact is deleted from HubSpot, their form submission will still count toward the total, but the contact will no longer appear in a list filtered by the form's submissions.
  • The Email field was not populated when the form was submitted. For a form submission to create a contact record in HubSpot, the default Email field must be used on your form. If not, you must allow form submissions without email addresses to create contacts.
  • The form submission used an email address already associated with a contact record, or the submission is done in a browser with tracking cookies tied to an existing contact record. In this scenario, the submission will update the existing contact record and not create a new one. Learn more about how HubSpot deduplicates contacts and how to recreate contacts overwritten by form submissions.

Contact did not record a page view when submitting form

 

 In order to correctly track page views, check that the HubSpot tracking code is installed on your site and firing correctly.

If the tracking code is installed and firing correctly, but the Number of page views property value on a contact is still '0', it's likely because cookies were blocked when the contact submitted the form. This could be due to several reasons:

Form submission not appearing on the activity timeline of associated objects

 To display a form submission in the activity timeline of an associated object:
  • The form must contain a form field belonging to that object type.
  • The form field belonging to that object type must be populated when the form is submitted.

For example, if the form contained a company property form field and this field was populated when the form was submitted, the form submission will appear in the activity timeline of the contact's associated company. To ensure that the field is always populated, you can set the form field to required. 

No contact record error

 If you don't allow form submissions without email addresses to create contacts, there are two reasons why you No contact record may be displayed in your form submission:
  • The Email field is not included and/or required on your form.
  • The contact associated with the submission has been deleted from HubSpot.

No record error

 This error means HubSpot wasn't able to determine where the submission occurred. This could be due to two reasons:

Page visit not recorded after form submission

 When a form submission does not record a page visit it's most likely because the IP address of the visitor has been excluded from your site analytics.
  • If the visitor submits the form while on an excluded IP address, their submission will be recorded in the form submission analytics but a page visit will not be counted.
  • If you are a user in a HubSpot account and not on an excluded IP address your form submission and page visit will be counted.

No cookie was found for this submission error

 This error could be caused by the following:
  • The submission originated from an external integration via HubSpot's API and did not include a cookie.
  • The visitor's browser blocked the cookie.
  • The visitor did not accept the cookie banner.
  • The visitor submitted using a filtered IP address. 

File removed from contact's form submission

 The HubSpot forms tool is equipped with virus detection that prevents suspicious files from being uploaded in form submissions.

If a visitor submits a form with a file and a virus is detected, the message [File name] removed from submission will appear in the submission details.

Additional company information displaying in my form notification 

 If HubSpot has additional company information in our databases, HubSpot will auto-populate this information to the bottom of the notification.

Contact missing a value for IP Country, IP State or IP City

 

 HubSpot uses multiple third-party databases to try to match a visitor's IP address to their geographic location. There are two reasons why a contact's IP Country, IP State/Region, or IP City may be blank:
  • Contacts must submit a form with cookie tracking enabled or interact with (open or click) a tracked HubSpot email to an associated IP address.
  • HubSpot was unable to find a match for the geolocation properties against its databases. IP address location data can be inaccurate or spotty in certain geographical locations, so there may be instances where HubSpot cannot find data for all three IP properties.

Troubleshoot common form display issues

The following are some common issues preventing your form from displaying in HubSpot or external pages, and the typical steps for resolution.

Error Steps to resolve the error

Form not displaying on a HubSpot page or an external page

If your form is not appearing on your HubSpot or external pages, there may be conflicting code on the page preventing it from doing so. The most common would be the OtAutoBlock.js script from One Trust.

By default, forms will not render on any pages where this script runs until cookies are accepted by visitors.

To display the form for all visitors, including those who have not accepted cookies, the script will need to be managed externally. You can consider the following options:

  • Configure the allowlist scripts in OneTrust’s OtAutoBlock.js script to allow the form to render. It is recommended to work with your developer on this.
  • Check with OneTrust if it is possible to allowlist HubSpot's form embed scripts. 
  • Remove the OneTrust’s OtAutoBlock.js script altogether.

Please note: when evaluating your troubleshooting steps, working with consent banners, and considering your privacy policy, your legal team is the best resource to give you compliance advice for your specific business circumstances.

Form not displaying on an external page

 If your form is not displaying on an external page, there may be an issue with the form embed code or the website host. Learn how to troubleshoot externally embedded forms. 

An embedded form is displaying in the wrong place on an external page

 After embedding a HubSpot form on an external page, if a form is rendered on a different position than desired, it may be due to: 
  • The form is being dynamically rendered on a page. 
  • Multiple form embed codes are being added to the same <div> tag. 
  • The form cannot load due to an older browser being used.

Learn more about how to resolve these issues by updating the form embed code. 

We had some trouble loading this form. Click here to continue error

 HubSpot forms are built with JavaScript to add features like field validation, dependent fields, and dynamic error messages. However, this means that resource-blocking browser extensions like Ghostery and Privacy Badger may block your forms from loading and displaying if they are enabled. 

The Click here to continue text is hyperlinked to https://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing/forms?utm_source=share.hsforms.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=hsforms-redirect, a protected domain controlled by HubSpot. When a visitor clicks the link, they'll be brought to a standalone form page where they can submit the form.

The link includes the full context of the original forms embed code in a query string, as well as the original page information like its title and URL. The form on this standalone page will behave exactly like the original form. Form submission on the standalone page will pass the same analytics information as a submission on your original form.

 
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