Hiding Fields on the Standard PDF from within the Builder

Updated December 31, 2024 02:24

Lauren Sunday

Community Manager

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Show This Field on PDF and Show All fields on PDF allows you to hide fields on the Standard PDF based on specific criteria.

Standard PDF Visibility

Here are some common uses for these settings.

Inspections: You only want items that fail an inspection to show up on the PDF.
Calculations: You don't want certain calculations or fields used in calculations to show up on the PDF at all. You may not want your customer to see your calculations or maybe you have extra calculations that you have done to arrive at the value you want.
Blank Fields: The most common use of this feature is hiding blank fields. If you don't fill in a field within your GoCanvas form then you may not want that blank field (and field label) to show up on your PDF. You can set up a field so it only shows up if you enter a value into it.

Show This Field on PDF

The feature Show This Field on PDF is located in the Advanced Field Settings. This setting is for individual fields and must be applied on a field-by-field basis.

Select the field in the center workspace to open the Field Settings in the left panel.
Expand the Advanced menu.
Expand the Show This Field on PDF drop down to change the PDF Visible settings.
Save and Publish and any future submission PDFs will now retain the new PDF Visible settings.

Show All Fields on PDF

Located in the Standard menu of the Screen Settings, Show all fields on PDF will be applied to all fields on the screen.

Select the field in the center workspace to open the Field Settings in the left panel.
Expand the Show This Field on PDF drop down to change the PDF Visible settings.
Save and Publish and any future submission PDFs will now retain the new PDF Visible settings.

PDF Visibility Options

Below are explanations for all the options. Besides Always or Never, you can also set a field or screen to show up on the PDF only if you actually use and enter data into it. If the field or screen is blank, it will not be visible on the PDF when this option is chosen. Similarly, you can choose to display a field only if the default field value is changed.

Always

The field label and value will always show up on the PDF even if it is left blank.

Never

The field level and value entered will never show up in the PDF.

Only if field is not empty

The field label and value entered will only show up on the PDF if the user enters a value in the field. If it is left blank it will not show up on the PDF.

Only if the default value has been changed

The field label and value entered will only show up on the PDF if the user changes the value from the default value, which would be set in the field setting Default Value, located in the Standard menu of the Field Settings. This is great for inspections because highlighting the failed items will help them stand out. Set the default value to "passed" or "ok" for all fields that are part of the inspection. If the user flags an item as "failed" then it will show up because they changed the default value.

Only if the default value has been changed & field is not empty

The field label and value entered will show up if the user changes the default and did not leave the field blank. If the user leaves the field blank, it will not show up.

Only to addresses set on the email options page

The field label and value entered will only show up on the version of the PDF sent to the e-mail addresses specified in the E-mail Options page for the form. For example, if each time a user fills out a submission for this form it always gets emailed to team@gocanvas.com then this particular PDF Visible setting will only display the field on the version sent to that address. If a user enters a customer's email address too, then that version will not contain this field label and field value. This is for situations where someone in the office needs to see what was entered into a field but the customer doesn't need to see it.

The other option that is similar is the Show This Field on Web option. What we are referring to is the view you see in the Submissions area if you just click on an individual submission to view it on the web. You have the same choices except for the very last one since this is not related to emailing a PDF.

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