formbuilder from address

[SolsWebdesign]

Hi, I have the following problem:
I have a contact form with the usual "*Email Results to set Address(es)", here I have "From address for email:" set to info@my-exampledomain.nl".

I also have a "*Email From Address Field, and send copy". I can choose here "From name for email:" set to "Contact form copy from my-exampledomain" and guess what? It never uses that from name, it will always use the name filled in the "Email From Name Field" (very confusing, this also contains a choice "Which email headers should this input populate?:") but let's go back to the Email From Address Field, send copy".

With the "Which email headers should this input populate?:" I have 2 main choices (either choose Reply-To email address or From email address or both but the last one I will ignore). A bit confusing because I can not enter a Reply to email anywhere so I assume the Reply-To email is the "From address for email:" set to info@my-exampledomain.nl" in "*Email Results to set Address(es)"...

I fill in the contact form at the front and choose for "send me a copy"

Now I get in my email the copy containing a "sender unknown" message with a spam filter warning that this is dangerous.

My client gets the proper email containing the form and what's filled in and it is send from info@my-exampledomain.nl.

Okay, so I don't want customers to get this "sender unknown" message with a spam filter warning so I go back to the "*Email From Address Field, and send copy" and change the "Which email headers should this input populate?:" to the From email address instead of the Reply to address (note, I do not change anything in the "*Email Results to set Address(es)"!).

I fill out the form again, send myself a copy and ...

get an email in my email containing the copy of the filled in form with another spam filter warning that this was not send by myself to myself and is probably dangerous...

What is worse is that my client recieves the filled out form from my(!) email address and not from info@my-exampledomain.nl as it should!!! And I have not changed anyting in the "*Email Results to set Address(es)"!

So, I can not get this right. What ever my choice, the customer filling in the form will get a spam warning and the copy is never send from the info@my-exampledomain.nl as it should. I have made plenty of contact forms before and with all my other sites this works fine but somehow for this site it will not work properly. The site is on 1.11.4 Fernandina and the Formbuilder is 0.8.1.1

I don't think the choise of the From email address of the copy to the customer-filling-in-the-form should influence the mail send to the client-owner-of-the-site. I also don't understand why I can't get the copy from the form send from the proper send-from address. Is this a bug or am I missing something really important?

I have searched all the forums but I can't find anyone with this problem. Can anybody point me in the right direction?
kind regards,
Isolde

[paulbaker]

(Your core CMSMS 1.11.4 is out of date).

I use FormBuilder. I have Extensions -> CMS Mailer -> Mailer method set to Mail. What's yours?

In "Which email headers should this input populate?" I have From email address. That's the default, I have never changed it (didn't even see it until your post). This seems to override the from address in the "Send to" field.

This setup works fine on my sites, the emails are sent to clients with the the from address showing as the address typed in by the website visitor. This makes it easy for client to reply direct back to them in their email client.

Any spam warnings are generated by your host and not CMSMS, as far as I can see. So you may be able to switch them off at server level.

[velden]

I'm curious if you can work around this without using a UDT (which is an option probably).

I've made a form once with 'copy to self' and iirc it does use the visitor's email address for sending the copy to self as well as the email to the site owner.

I do agree it would make more sense to use another email address for the copy to self email (e.g. the default from CMSMailer).

[SolsWebdesign]

Hi,

The Extensions -> CMS Mailer -> Mailer method set to Mail seems to have no effect on the behavior of the contact form from formbuilder sadly The spam warnings are from my mail provider and switching them off will not help others filling in the form and getting their own spam warnings You are right, paulbaker, for the client it is easier to have the mail "come from" the email address of the person who filled it in. But it is actually not really correct: it should strictly be from the site where it was filled in. I usually use a no-reply address for this...

I have never noticed this behavior before and on some old sites the overriding does not occur (I checked one of my oldest cmsmadesimple sites yesterday). I might try velden's idea of a UDT... because I would like to have both mails from the standard email address used by the site. I'm happy with your replies because it means this is general behavior (and not some strange problem in this one site) and I simply didn't think of a UDT. I'm going to look into this

[paulbaker]

But it is actually not really correct: it should strictly be from the site where it was filled in. I usually use a no-reply address for this...

I used a no-reply address too, until I got fed up with clients simply replying to the form emails, and then getting confused the replies weren't being sent to the sender of the form.

Anyway, let us know the outcome of your digging around.

[velden]

The Extensions -> CMS Mailer -> Mailer method set to Mail seems to have no effect on the behavior of the contact form from formbuilder sadly

You're right. I usually use the "*Email Results to set Address(es)" field and that has it's own from name and from address.

You realize that the the email address is overwritten because you choose the specific field type?

Email "From Address" Field. This allows users to provide their email address. The email generated when the form gets handled will use this address in the "From" field.
*Email "From Address" Field, and send copy. This works like the Email "From Address" Field described above, but it provides options for sending a copy of the results to the user.

If you consider using a UDT for the 'copy to self' part you might use a generic text input field for the visitors email adres.

[oliver341]

Perhaps it's something else: http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/bug/view/10429

When I run a copy of my site locally, I can see when Form Builder attempts to email a copy of the form back to the submitting user in the Exim logs. "Mail from" is completely unset in the smtp communication, and so it just fails.

[Jo Morg]

I tried to reproduce this on a localhost test install and on an online server, and couldn't.
It might be some configuration on your servers' environment that is preventing the emails being sent with an invalid sender address account on the server itself.
On some hosts/servers there are these restrictions.

[oliver341]

Hi Jo,

Thanks for your reply.

Please see these two Exim SMTP log lines. Both were generated as a result of one click of "Submit". CMSMailer set to SMTP.


1st line, generated by the "Email Results to set Address(es)" field:

Code: Select all

2015-02-23 23:36:49 1YQ2YT-0000rE-1j <= no-reply@mydomain.co.uk H=localhost (192.168.1.70) [::1] P=esmtp S=2041 id=c56a512a4da859691acbfeedf50b51a6@192.168.1.70

2nd line at exactly the same time, tries to send a copy to the person submitting the form:

Code: Select all

2015-02-23 23:36:49 1YQ2YS-0000rE-Tw <= <> H=localhost (192.168.1.70) [::1] P=esmtp S=1977 id=2be05cb581476a3fd58204e1c0eb3232@192.168.1.70

Please note the <> in the second quote block - the Mail From content is not being sent to Exim over SMTP.

Why would SMTP Mail From be generated by the "Email Results to set Address(es)" field but not by the "Email From Address Field, and send copy" field, by exactly the same form by exactly the same click?

[oliver341]

I see it now.

I have "Which email headers should this input populate?" set to "Reply-to".

This works fine for emails sent to the Webmaster, since if the From Address is not replaced by the form contents, it uses the From Address set in "Email Results to set Address(es)". This is the behaviour I want, since setting the Mail From with the form contents breaks SPF and the email is refused.

However in the case of sending a copy to the form sender, if "Which email headers should this input populate?" is set to "Reply-to", there is no content to populate it with, so it is not populated, and the mail server rejects it.

It's been said before in the thread and I'll say it again, we need to option to specify the Mail From for the send a copy facility.

[oliver341]

And no-one has really addressed the issue that replacing Mail From with the form's contents will almost certainly break SPF, since the sending mail server will not be authorised to send mail for the From Address in question. This will result in the email at best ending up in the spam folder, and at worst ending up being deleted, maybe silently.

I think velden has the best solution. Where send a copy is specified, with the form contents only populating reply-to, use the from address specified in CMSMailer.

[SolsWebdesign]

I totally agree with oliver341. I get the same results: when the form tries to send a copy to the person submitting the form the logging shows the empty address (and in the other case the address of the person filling in the form). In both cases the person filling in the form may just get a warning, the copy may end up in the spam box or no copy is send at all...
Velden is right: it does say it "correctly" in the documentation. However, 3 of my 4 test addresses will generate a spam warning if my copy is send to my email address containing the same email address from which it is send to which it is being send.. if you see what I mean
But if I don't choose that option, I expect the copy-to-person to also contain the "From address" as set for the form. And that, for some reason does not happen: it is send with an empty from address (as Oliver341 also noted).

[oliver341]

Yes, that's another option. Where the form only populates Reply To, the From Address for the copy could be set to the From Address set in "Email Results to set Address(es)". If that's not feasible, then there's also the From Address set in CMSMailer.

But it should never try to send with a blank From Address, which it does do.

[oliver341]

Jo,

Would really appreciate it if you re-test this issue where the form's From contents only populate Reply-to and confirm if you can replicate it. As it stands, my form's users are never getting the copy they request because Mail From is blank during SMTP.

CMSMailer: smtp
Which email headers should this input populate: Reply-to
Send a copy of submission: yes

Thanks.

[Jo Morg]

Jo,

Would really appreciate it if you re-test this issue where the form's From contents only populate Reply-to and confirm if you can replicate it.

I will as soon as I have the time. Sometimes I can do it sooner, sometimes not so soon. Other FB developers might be also busy at the moment. Rest assured that I didn't dismissed the possibility of it being a bug yet, otherwise I'd have changed the status of the bug report on the forge. You'll have news as soon as I or someone on the FB dev team has the time to re-test it and eventually fix it if need be.