Forminator scheduled actions continue after plugin removal

I would like to report an issue I encountered on a WordPress staging website after uninstalling Forminator.

After Forminator had been removed, two Forminator scheduled actions continued to run approximately every minute:

forminator_process_report
forminator_send_export

Because the Forminator callbacks were no longer available, these actions repeatedly failed. The number of Forminator-related failures eventually reached 922.

After manually cancelling these two recurring actions, the failures stopped completely. We checked again the following day: no Forminator tasks had been rescheduled and the failure counter was still exactly 922.

Date of investigation: 22–23 September 2026
Purpose: Report findings that may be useful to the Forminator
support/development team.

Summary

During troubleshooting of a WordPress staging site, Forminator was
removed after unusual errors/code had appeared in the WordPress admin
area. After removal, we discovered that two Forminator scheduled actions
continued to run every minute even though the Forminator plugin was no
longer installed/active.

Because the callbacks belonging to Forminator were no longer registered,
these scheduled actions failed repeatedly. The number of
Forminator-related failed background tasks continued to increase until
the two recurring actions were manually cancelled.

After cancellation, the Forminator failure counter stopped increasing.

What was observed

The site initially showed unusual code/error output in the WordPress
admin dashboard that appeared to be related to Forminator. Forminator
was subsequently uninstalled/deleted.

A diagnostic investigation using ChatGPT Work/Astra then found the
following:

• Old Forminator data was still present in the database.
• 12 old Forminator form records were detected.
• 4 Forminator-related database tables remained, including stored
  submissions.
• These tables and records were deliberately NOT deleted, because we
  did not want to risk losing historical form/submission data.
• Two Forminator scheduled actions remained active after the plugin had been removed:
  • forminator_process_report
  • forminator_send_export
• Both actions were scheduled to run approximately every minute.
• They failed because no callback/executing function was registered
  after Forminator had been removed.
• The failed-action count continued to grow while these scheduled
  actions remained active.

At one point, the diagnostic report showed approximately 880
Forminator-related failed actions and increasing. Immediately before
cancellation/verification, the Forminator error counter reached 922.

Action taken

Before making changes, a new full Duplicator backup of the staging site
was created on 22 September 2026 at 21:49.

The backup contained: – approximately 1.42 GB; – 56,544 files; – 8,944
directories; – all 229/229 database tables.

No Forminator database tables, forms, submissions, logs or other
Forminator data were deleted.

Only the following two recurring scheduled actions were cancelled:

• forminator_process_report
• forminator_send_export

The first cancellation attempt unexpectedly redirected to a Location
Weather welcome screen, so the same scheduled-action management
functionality was subsequently accessed via WooCommerce. Both Forminator
actions were then confirmed as cancelled.

Verification

The following day, 23 September 2026, the site was checked again.

Results:

• No Forminator scheduled actions were pending.
• Neither recurring Forminator task had been re-scheduled.
• The Forminator failure/error counter was still exactly 922.
• Therefore, no additional Forminator failures had been added since
  cancellation.

The previously cancelled task records were no longer visible in the
“Cancelled” overview, so their historical cancellation status could not
be re-confirmed directly. However, the fact that no Forminator actions
were pending and the failure counter remained unchanged indicates that
the recurring failures had stopped.

Related form behaviour

There had also been problems with contact forms appearing to disappear
or reporting “form not found”. During the investigation it became clear
that at least part of this behaviour was related to Contact Form 7 and
WPML language assignments/filtering rather than Forminator itself.

Those Contact Form 7/WPML issues were subsequently corrected separately.
English, German, Dutch and Finnish contact forms were tested
successfully and the submitted messages arrived correctly.

For that reason, we are not claiming that Forminator caused the
disappearing Contact Form 7 forms.

Main issue being reported to Forminator

The important Forminator-specific observation is:

After Forminator was removed from WordPress, the scheduled actions
forminator_process_report and forminator_send_export remained scheduled
and continued to execute every minute. Because the Forminator callbacks
were no longer available, they generated repeated failed background
actions until they were manually cancelled.

It may be useful for the Forminator team to investigate whether plugin
deactivation/uninstallation should automatically unschedule these
recurring actions, or otherwise prevent them from continuing to execute
after the plugin is removed.

Additional notes

No evidence from this investigation is sufficient to determine whether
the unusual code/error output originally seen in the WordPress dashboard
was caused by a Forminator defect, another plugin conflict, or another
issue. We therefore do not attribute that behaviour to Forminator
without further evidence.

The remaining Forminator database records/tables have intentionally been
preserved in case the support/development team would like additional
information from them before they are eventually cleaned up.

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