Auto Trash Form Submissions | Form Settings - Zoho Forms

Auto-Trash Submissions

Auto trashing entries allows you to schedule the automatic deletion of form submission data for individual forms. This feature can spare you the time and effort of manually handling the information you gathered using your form. For example, if you are using your form to automate the process of adding entries to your Zoho CRM account, you will have all your form entries added into CRM and and you may not need the form entries to take up the space in your Zoho Forms account. In such cases, you can choose to automatically trash the received entries after a set period of time.
Auto-trashing form entries can simplify data management, optimize storage, and focus on relevant data, making it a useful feature for maintaining a well-organized and efficient form submission process.

Auto-trash entries

The interval for trashing the form entries determines how often the action of trashing form entries is performed based on the specified frequency. 
For example, if you choose to automatically trash the entries every 7 days on Jan 1, at 1:00 PM:
  1. The first set of entries will get trashed on Jan 15, 1:00 PM and not on Jan 8, 1:00 PM, so that you can always have your 7-day-old form entries as a safeguard.
  2. The second set of entries  will get trashed on Jan 22, 1 :00 PM
  3. The third set of entries will get trashed on Jan 29, 1:00 PM and it goes on.
To enable the option to auto trash your form entries,
  1. In your form builder, navigate to the Settings tab > Submissions & Storage > Auto-Trash.

    Click Configure Now


  2. Click Configure Now.
  3. Select the number of days after which you want entries to be automatically trashed on a regular basis from the dropdown.

    Select auto-trash frequency


  4. Click Save.
  5. You can view the entries trashed automatically in the All Entries section after applying the filter.
Notes
Note:
  1. The feature to auto trash form submissions is available only in our Premium and Zoho One Enterprise plans.
  2. Entries submitted before the auto-trash option is enabled will not be automatically trashed.
  3. Once the entries are auto-trashed, they will be available to restore for 5 days before they are deleted permanently.
  4. Entries that have not been pushed to any integrated services, or those that have pending approvals or payments, will not be trashed automatically. Only after they have been successfully pushed to the required services will they be auto trashed in the next auto-trash cycle.
  5. If you choose to restore entries before they are permanently trashed, please note that they will still be auto-trashed in the next cycle as long as the the Auto Trash Entries option is enabled.

  1. Once the entries are permanently deleted from the auto-trashed entries, they cannot be retrieved.
  2. The auto-trash scheduler configuration is automatically removed when:
    1. A form or folder containing the form is deleted or trashed
    2. You downgrade your account
    3. The form is marked as spam