Recipients

An email rule sends to the recipients under its To field. This guide covers who can receive the email. For the "only if" part of a rule, see Conditions.

The three kinds of recipient

In the rule's To step, when creating or editing, use Add recipient on the To row. You pick a type:

• Email: a fixed address you type in (for example team@school.org)
• Respondent: the person who submitted the form
• Form field: an email address collected in one of the form's questions

You can mix all three on a single rule. They all land in the email's To line, and each shows as a chip you can remove.

Emailing the respondent

Choose Respondent to email whoever submitted the form. Your form must collect respondent emails for this to work: in the form, go to Settings, Responses, Collect email addresses.

Emailing an address from the form

Choose Form field and pick a question that collects an email address. On each submission, the rule sends to whatever address the respondent entered there.

Heads-up: a rule whose only recipient is the respondent or a form field skips any submission that does not provide a valid address. No email is sent for that response. The editor warns you when a rule is set up this way. Add a fixed email address too if you always want a copy to go somewhere.

CC and BCC

The CC and BCC rows accept typed email addresses only, not the respondent or a form field. Add as many as you need.

Reply-to

By default, replies go to your account's email address. You can override this per rule under Message, Sender and reply-to. This is useful when replies should land in a shared inbox instead of your personal address. Setting a real reply-to also helps your emails stay out of spam.

The recipient address check

When you add a recipient, Form Notifications checks the address's domain (the part after the @) against public DNS. If the domain does not exist or has no mail service, the rule shows a warning. It is advisory: you can still save. See Testing Your Rules.

A rule needs a recipient

An email rule needs at least one recipient (a typed email, the respondent, or a form field) before it can be created or turned on. CC and BCC do not count. Until then the wizard says what is missing instead of offering Create rule.

One rule, one set of recipients

Each rule has its own recipients. To email two groups different messages, or on different conditions, create two rules. Duplicate copies a rule so you only change the recipients. See Rules.