dtynan

That error is coming from Contact Form 7 ( http://contactform7.com/faq/after-submitting-the-form-i-get-an-error-message/ ). It sounds like your WordPress probably doesn’t have mail set up correctly, or you may have misconfigured the fields in the CF7 form you made.

Before you do anything, I suggest you read my first 2 comments in this thread, which will explain how the EBD emails work:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sent-email-doesnt-contain-a-download-link?replies=5

As you can see, 2 emails are sent (assuming you chose ’email’ or ‘both’ in the EBD settings). Your best option at this point is to install Postman SMTP. That will let you configure the From: field (which will let it get delivered to mail providers like Yahoo Mail, which would otherwise block it). It will also probably make the red box error message go away. And, if nothing else, it at least gives you a log you can look at to see what is wrong.

It’s difficult to tell what’s happening from that screenshot rather than looking at the data file itself.

My guess is that the data itself might not be messed up and instead it just looks messed up because you are looking at it in Excel and Excel appears to not be parsing it as a comma-separated value file (there are various options in Excel to tell it how to understand text files it brings in & it looks like maybe you don’t hav.e the right ones selected).

Also, just fyi, the export csv file function has the field names hard-coded in there, so it will not make columns in the csv file for any extra fields you put on the form. Thus, it will have a column for the value of the “your-name” field from the form but not any extra name fields (like surname or whatever). Even though there won’t be a column in the csv for each extra field you put on the form, the data for any extra fields you add will actually be there, but it’s all stuffed into that xml you see in the “posted_data” column. Thus, “posted_data” will be an xml blob & it will contain every field & value that was POSTed up to the server when the website visitor hit Submit on your form. In order to get at that data, you’d probably want to use some sort of script that could parse that xml blob & get the data out you want then write out a new csv file with the columns you want & whatever you wanted from the xml (this might also be possible in some programs like Excel, but I don’t know if it can parse xml in a cell or not).

wait, what do you mean it “shows download.php”? Do you mean it shows the PHP statements as text rather than running the program? Or do you mean you see that download.php is running but nothing appears?

Assuming the latter, then most likely you are using Chrome as your browser. Try it again with Firefox. If it works, then read through this item: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/email-before-download-just-hangs-after-clicking-link?replies=11

You can try to “force” the download, which will cause the file save box to popup as if someone had right-clicked.

Go into your Downloads (the Download Monitor section of your wordpress menu). Edit whatever your download is so you’re on the detail page. Over on the right side will be a checkbox for something like “Force Download”. Check it (or uncheck it if it’s already checked). Test again. If it still doesn’t work change the hide/mask setting and try again.

Note that testing this is really tricky. There is a difference in how Chrome works or doesn’t work, depending on whether or not the PDF is in your browser’s cache or not (and possibly how recently it got in there). That is probably why you are sometimes seeing it work and sometimes hang. I suggest you clearing your cache & exiting & restarting your browser every single time between tests. That way you will be certain to never have anything cached and a clean browser every time you test. Otherwise, you won’t really know what works & what doesn’t….

Great, glad it works.

Just as a side note — if you have it set to ’email’ or ‘both’ rather than ‘inline’ in EBD settings then there is a good chance that the email probably isn’t getting to the website visitor that filled out the form, depending on who his email provider is. Some providers, like Yahoo Mail, are probably going to block the email. If you are set to ’email’ or ‘both’ then let me know & I’ll explain what you need to do (you might want to test with a yahoo email account to confirm that it doesn’t get through). If you’re set to ‘inline’, just ignore this… 🙂

The file you included there was download.php, not email-before-download.php. However, that may not matter as I just realized that message text you are seeing is not in either file.

Hmm. Unfortunately, my installation has been modified a whole bunch, so I’m not sure exactly where that would be coming from. You can check the EBD settings page in your wordpress menu. There are 15 or so settings in there – maybe that message is in one of those boxes.

Also, go check the CF7 form you made. Edit it and then one of the tabs is “Messages”. Click on that and then scroll down and look at each of the messages and see if it’s in there. I wouldn’t expect it to be since it specifically mentions a “download”, but check just to be sure.

If you don’t find it in either of those places then it has to be in email-before-download.php .. maybe you have an older version than the latest or something? not sure….

You have to edit email-before-download.php in order to change that message (I believe it is in two places so you’d probably want to change both). Note that if a new version of Email Before Download comes out at some point and you upgrade then it will overwrite your changed version and you’ll need to make that change again.

On the csv export, the fields are all hardcoded into the export.php file. So, you can add new fields to the CF7 form, but they won’t show up as their own column in the csv. However, one column in the csv file is called posted_data or something like that and it contains all the fields that were sent up when the user pressed submit on the form. That will have any extra fields and their values. Obviously it’s just one column in the csv so in order to get all the data into that one column they make it xml. So, to get the data back out you’d have to have some sort of script or program or something like that to parse the xml in that field and pull out that extra piece of data. Alternatively, you could make a bunch of modifications to email-before-download.php and export.php to add that extra field to the database tables and then support it in the code & in the export code. That would be some work.

also, don’t use any punctuation in the filename you upload (aside from the period). Same goes for the file description you type in. No dashes, no underscores, etc. That shouldn’t make a difference, but just eliminating things…. Do not use any foreign characters either, obviously.