Save CF7 Submissions to the WordPress Database

By default, Contact Form 7 doesn’t store your form submissions anywhere inside WordPress — every entry only ever exists as an email, or as a row in your connected Google Sheet. That works fine most of the time, but what happens if Google’s API has a hiccup and an entry doesn’t make it to your sheet?

That’s exactly the gap the CF7 Database feature closes. It gives Contact Form 7 its own local database of submissions inside WordPress, acting as a safety net and a way to cross-check that every entry has actually made it to Google Sheets.

Step 1: Enable Database Storage

To start recording form submissions locally:

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Navigate to Google Sheet → CF7 Database.
3. Under CF7 Database Manager, toggle on Enable Database Storage to automatically save all form submissions to your WordPress database.
4. Click the Save Settings button.

Step 2: View the Contact Forms List

Once enabled, every form on your site appears under Contact Forms List, along with a live entry count. This gives you two practical benefits:

• Visibility: See at a glance how frequently each form is being filled out from the front end, via the Count column.
• A safety net: Occasionally, due to Google API limitations, an entry might not make it into your connected Google Sheet. When that happens, you can find the missing entry inside CF7 Database and manually send it across.

Click a form’s name in the list, or its entry count, to open and manage its stored entries.

Step 3: Manage a Form’s Stored Entries

Clicking a form name (for example, “Contact form 1”) opens its Form Entry List Table, where you can review, search, export, and resend entries.

From this screen you can:

• Back to Forms: Click the Back to Forms button to return to the Form Listing page.
• Search Form Entries: Use the search box in the top right to quickly find a specific entry.
• Export CSV: Click Export CSV to download all of this form’s entries as a CSV file.
• Bulk Actions: Select one or more entries using the checkboxes, choose an action from the Bulk Actions dropdown — Read, Unread, Delete, or Send To Spreadsheet — and click Apply to manage multiple entries at once.
• Sort by Date: Click the Date column header to sort entries by submission date.
• Pagination: Use the page controls at the top right to move through entries when a form has more than one page of results.

Send an Individual Entry to Google Sheets

If you notice a specific entry is missing from your Google Sheet — or just want to double-check it’s synced — click the Send To Spreadsheet button next to that entry in the table. This sends just that one entry to your connected Google Sheet.

What’s Next?

Want to control who on your team can access these entries? Check out the Role Settings – PRO Version guide. For more on configuring how your data is synced in the first place, see the Plugin Settings – PRO Version guide.