Change the labels and text on forms

Forms on a Govintra intranet – subscribe, feedback, booking, request and contact forms – are built with the Gravity Forms plugin. The wording on a form (field labels, the (Required) marker, the smaller description text under a field, the button text) lives in the form itself, not on the page that shows it. Editing the page will not change it. This article shows where each piece of wording is changed.

Why editing the page does not change the form wording

A form reaches the intranet in one of three ways, and none of them stores the wording on the page:

  • A page or post holds a Gravity Forms shortcode, such as [gravityform id="3" title="true"]. The shortcode is all you see in the editor; the form is drawn from Forms when the page loads.
  • The Feedback widget shows a form chosen in the widget’s settings.
  • An event shows a booking form when a form number is typed in its Gravity Forms ID box.

In every case, change the wording in Forms. The change then appears wherever that form is used.

Who can edit forms

Gravity Forms usually lets only administrators edit forms. If Forms is not in your left-hand admin menu, ask your intranet administrator to make the change or to give you access. Your intranet’s set-up may differ.

Find the form you need to edit

  1. In the admin menu, select Forms. The list shows every form with its ID number.
  2. Select the form’s title to open the form editor.

Not sure which form it is?

  • Form on a page or post: open the page in the editor, select the Text tab and note the id number in the shortcode. It matches the ID column in the forms list.
  • Feedback widget: go to Appearance, Widgets, open the Feedback widget and note the form chosen under Gravity Form.
  • Event booking form: open the event and note the number in its Gravity Forms ID box.

Change a field label on a form

  1. In the form editor, select the field, for example Email address. Its settings open on the right.
  2. On the General tab, change Field Label.
  3. Select Save Form.

If the words “(Required)” are still there after you change the required marker (below), someone has typed them into the label itself. Remove them here.

Change or remove the description text under a field

  1. Select the field.
  2. On the General tab, edit or clear the Description box.
  3. Select Save Form.

To move every description above its field rather than below, use Description Placement under Form Layout in the form settings, described in the next section.

Change the (Required) marker on a form

The (Required) marker after a label is not part of the label. Gravity Forms adds it to every required field, and you change it once for the whole form.

  1. In the form editor, select Settings, then Form Settings.
  2. Under Form Layout, find Required Field Indicator.
  3. Choose Asterisk for a star, Text for (Required), or Custom and type your own wording.
  4. Select Save Settings.

To stop a field being required at all, select the field in the form editor and turn off Required under Rules on its General tab.

Change the placeholder text inside a box

Grey example text inside a box, such as “Enter your full name”, is a placeholder. Select the field, open its Appearance tab and edit Placeholder. Placeholders disappear when staff start typing, so put anything they must know in the label or description instead.

Change the form title and the text above a form

The heading at the top of a form and the paragraph under it come from Form Title and Form Description in Form Settings. Whether they are shown depends on where the form is used:

  • On a page or post: the shortcode decides. [gravityform id="3" title="true" description="true"] shows both; change “true” to “false” in the Text tab to hide one.
  • In the Feedback widget: the form title is not shown. The heading staff see is the widget’s own Title in Appearance, Widgets; if left blank it reads “Is something wrong with this page?”. The form description is shown.
  • On an event: both the title and the description are shown.

Any other introduction is ordinary page content: edit it on the page as usual.

Change the text on the form’s button

  1. In the form editor, select Settings, then Form Settings.
  2. Under Form Button, change Button Text, for example from “Submit” to “Send feedback”.
  3. Select Save Settings.

Change the message shown after a form is sent

The “Thanks for contacting us” message is a confirmation. In the form editor, select Settings, then Confirmations, open the confirmation and edit its message. A confirmation can also send staff to a page instead of showing a message.

Check the form

Select Preview in the form editor, or view a page where the form is used. Govintra styles the form to match the intranet: labels are bold and descriptions are smaller, lighter text. The theme does not change the wording, so what you type in Gravity Forms is what staff see. If the same form is used in more than one place, the change appears everywhere.

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