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Troubleshooting Ninja Forms: Why Are My Submissions Showing 'Redacted' or '&'?

22 threads Sep 9, 2025 Plugin → Ninja forms – the contact form builder that grows with you

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If you've found that your Ninja Forms submissions are displaying the frustrating “(redacted)” message for all data or are converting special characters like ‘&’ into ‘&’, you're not alone. These are common issues that can often be resolved by checking a few key settings. This guide will walk you through the most likely causes and their solutions.

Understanding the “Redacted” Submission Problem

The most common reason for all fields in a submission to show as “(redacted)” is a conflict with the form's data storage settings. This is typically not a bug but a result of how the “Store Submission” action is configured.

Primary Cause and Solution:

  • The “Store Submission” action must be active on your form for entries to be saved to your WordPress database. If this action is not enabled, no data will be stored, often resulting in “redacted” placeholders.
  • Conversely, having multiple “Store Submission” actions active on a single form can create duplicate entries. Check your form's “Emails & Actions” settings and ensure only one “Store Submission” action is present.
  • Navigate to Ninja Forms > Edit Form > Emails & Actions tab. Confirm that a “Store Submission” action is present and correctly configured to save the data you need.

Fixing Special Character Encoding (e.g., & becoming &)

Another frequent issue is the incorrect encoding of special characters like ampersands (&) in the form submission table. The character ‘&’ is displayed as its HTML entity, ‘&’.

Why This Happens:

  • This is typically a security feature. Ninja Forms, like many other platforms, sanitizes data before displaying it in the browser to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. This process converts special characters into their HTML equivalents.

Potential Workarounds:

  • This sanitization is often intentional for security. However, if you require the raw data for processing, you may need to access it programmatically.
  • The data is often stored correctly in the database. You might need to use custom code or export the submissions to a CSV file to view the unsanitized characters.
  • For developers, using the wp_kses() or html_entity_decode() functions carefully on the output can revert these entities back to their original characters, but this must be done with extreme caution to maintain site security.

Checking for Plugin Conflicts

If the above solutions don't resolve your issue, a plugin or theme conflict could be the cause. To test for this:

  1. Temporarily switch your WordPress theme to a default theme like Twenty Twenty-Four.
  2. Deactivate all plugins except Ninja Forms.
  3. If the problem is resolved, reactivate your plugins one by one to identify the one causing the conflict.

By methodically checking these settings and potential conflicts, you can usually resolve the issues of redacted data or encoded characters and get your forms working correctly again.

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