Contact form 7 required field not working: tags

The tag is the whole rule. Contact Form 7 reads the tag, not the label. A label that says Phone (required) above a text field does nothing if the tag is written without the star. The owner who tests by typing into every field never sees the gap, because the field is always filled. A stranger who skips it sends an empty value, and the mail arrives with a blank line where the phone number should be. The owner then blames the visitor, when the tag was the fault.

• Open the form editor and read each tag. A required text box has a star right after its type, such as text*.
• Check every checkbox and radio group, since each group needs its own star to be enforced.
• Submit the form empty in a private window. A required message beside the field proves the tag works.
• Look for a required field inside a closed panel, tab or step the visitor cannot see.
• Compare each label with its tag. A label that says required is only text, and the tag decides.

A form built in Contact Form 7 is a list of tags in the editor. Each tag names a field type, a required mark and a field name, and the required mark is the only thing the plugin reads to enforce the rule. A required text box is written with the star after the type, and a tag without the star is optional. A label, a heading or an asterisk drawn by the theme changes nothing for the plugin.

Checkboxes and radio groups need their own star too. A group of consent boxes can look required on the page while its tag reads as optional, and then a blank group sends with no message. Look at the saved mail to see which field arrived empty, then open the tag it came from. The saved mail is the fastest way to find the tag that let it through.

A required field inside a collapsed panel, a tab or a step the visitor has not opened can fail the check while staying out of sight. The browser then tries to show its message on that field, which the visitor cannot see, so the page seems to do nothing. The fix is to move the field into view or make it optional, not to hope the visitor opens the panel.

A copied form can carry the wrong star. A form duplicated from another page keeps its tags, and an owner who edits the labels in the page builder never opens the tags. A new field added in a hurry can also come in without its star. Each of these passes a review of the page, because the label still says required.

Give the visitor the booking page and a task with its reason for skipping the phone field, such as not wanting a tutor to call. It fills in the name and email, leaves the phone field empty, presses Send and reports the message beside each field, or the lack of one. The report also shows any request the page sent, with a screenshot and any script error on the same step.

The run reports what the page did with the empty field, not why the tag is written that way. It does not read the form editor, so it cannot tell you which tag is at fault. Open the tag yourself after any run that sent the form blank, and fix the tag rather than the label. A label change alone leaves the send unchanged.

A duplicated form, a template update or a new field added in a hurry can bring back an optional tag you already fixed. Rerun the visitor who skips the field after each change, and check the saved mail for an empty value. Owners behind a site password, or testing each preview deploy, repeat the check before they publish.