March 25, 2020

Google Tag Manager Form Submission Trigger Not Working? 9 Reasons and Solutions

So here’s a situation: you’re trying to track form successful submissions and fire the conversion tag but the built-in Form Submission trigger in Google Tag Manager is just not working. Why?

The reality is that there are no standards on how forms are coded. Some might redirect you to a “Thank you” page, others refresh the page, others don’t even do that.

Different types of forms require different solutions.

You need to understand this: Google Tag Manager is like a toolkit. It contains a hammer, a screwdriver, etc. Every tool is built for a specific set of tasks. Unfortunately, the Form Submission trigger is not universal for ALL forms.

So if you got your GTM Form Submission trigger not working, don’t worry. I’ve got a bunch of tips on how to fix that.

Complete Guide to Form tracking with Google Tag Manager
Possible reasons why Google Tag Manager Form Submission Trigger is not working
GTM Form Submission Trigger Not Working: Final Words

Complete Guide to Form tracking with Google Tag Manager

If you’re new to form tracking in Google Tag Manager, I highly recommend checking out my extensive guide on how to track these website elements properly.

It is a lengthy guide but hey, nobody said that form tracking was easy. So if you really want to get things right, read the guide.

Possible reasons why Google Tag Manager Form Submission Trigger is not working

I have collected a bunch of possible reasons why the trigger is not working for you. If none of the tips help you, let me know in the comments. Just like any other “X is not working” blog post I wrote in the past, this one is ready to be updated based on your edge cases and feedback.

#1. Form submission event appears even if you have enabled “Check Validation”

If you try to use the built-in GTM Form Submission trigger, always test both scenarios:

Successfully submit the form
Submit the form with some errors (e.g., a required field is empty)

When you configure a Form Submission trigger, there is an option called Check Validation.

It, supposedly, should track form submission only when the form was successfully submitted. However, quite often, forms are coded in a different way and due to that, you will see the Form Submission event in the preview mode even if the form was unsuccessfully submitted.

What options do you have? Inspect how that form works.

Is the visitor redirected to a “Thank you” page after the successful submission? If yes, follow these instructions instead.
Does the form just display the success message but the page is not reloaded? Try this or this option.
If none of the tips in this blog post help, cooperate with a developer.

#2. You have misconfigured “Enable this trigger when…” setting

When you tick Wait for Tags or Check Validation settings in the Form Submission trigger, this mysterious new section appears.

This part is responsible for whether the Form Submission listener will be activated in the first place. A listener, in this case, is a function that is activated in the background and is looking for Form Submission events on a page. If the listener is not active, no Form Submission event will be visible in the debug mode (and in the Data Layer, in general).

This section (“enable this trigger when”) is responsible for the activation of the listener. In other words, this part of the trigger is asking you “On which pages would you have form tracking enabled?”.

If you are interested in tracking submissions on all pages, then enter the condition: Page Path contains /

This will be always true because the {{Page Path}} variable always contains at least one slash.

A common mistake here is to use form-related GTM variables here. If you do that, the Form Submission trigger will not work.

#3. It’s not enough to enable Form Variables. You need the Form Submission trigger too.

In order to start seeing Form Submission events in the Preview and Debug mode, you need to have AT LEAST one built-in Form submission trigger active on a page.

Enabling form-related variables is not enough. You also need to have at least Form Submission trigger (trigger conditions do not matter).

#4. The form is in the iFrame

If you’re trying to track Form Submissions and that form is in the iFrame, you will not be able to track it UNLESS one of two conditions are met:

You have access to the source code of that iframe and you (or your developer) can add a Google Tag Manager container to that iFrame. If this is possible for you, follow this guide.
The form you’re trying to track is built by some very popular 3rd party provider that offers a public JavaScript API. You could then write a Custom Auto-Event Listener that listens to form submissions and posts the related data to the Data Layer. I don’t have any examples for form tracking but here is an example that was applied to track Chat Widgets. Nevertheless, this is quite difficult and you need to have some JavaScript knowledge.

How to check if the form is in the iFrame? Do the right-click on the form you are interested in. Then in the Elements tab, climb up the tree and check you eventually bump into the <iframe> element.

#5. You’re dealing with an AJAX form

Quite often, I see forms that behave like this:

You submit the form
And almost immediately you see the success message appear. The page did not refresh, the URL of the page did not change.

It is very likely that the form you’re dealing with is built with AJAX (it’s a certain technology).

How can you be sure if the form you’re dealing with is using AJAX? Create a Custom HTML tag, paste this code, set the tag to fire on All Pages and save it.

Now refresh (or enable) the GTM Preview and Debug mode, refresh the page where the form is located and then submit the form. Did the ajaxComplete event appear in the debug console?

If yes, you’re dealing with an AJAX form. Read this guide to learn how to track it.

#6. The success or error message is visible only after the page is reloaded

Some forms, after you hit the Submit button, redirect you to another page (regardless of whether the submission was successful or not). And only on that page, you see either the success or error message.

To make things even worse, you probably can see the Form Submission event appear in the Preview mode right before the page is reloaded (or the user is redirected).

In this case, the Form Submission trigger will not help. You can try one of these three options:

#7. The Data Layer is broken

Sometimes, Form Submission trigger is not working because you (or your developers) have incorrectly configured the Data Layer, thus broke it.

If that’s the case, no event tracking will work in GTM (that includes clicks, scrolling, etc.). All you will see is just two events and a mysterious in the Preview mode:

…and a mysterious Message. Page view event is missing.

If you see this, read this guide on how to fix the Data Layer.

#8. Seeing Form Submission event even though no form was submitted?

Here’s another situation for you. You have enabled the Form Submission trigger in Google Tag Manager, refreshed the preview and debug mode, then refreshed the page and all of a sudden you see the Form Submission event in the debug console (even though no form was submitted).

Why did that happen?

Long story short, this is caused by Facebook Pixel (if you have implemented one on a page). It does not matter whether the Pixel code is hardcoded or implemented via GTM. How can you solve this? Read this guide to get the answer.

#9. Incorrect Trigger condition

If you have multiple forms on a page and you want to track them, it might be tempting to create a trigger like this.

Unfortunately, this will not work because ALL of the conditions in a GTM trigger must be met. So if you use 3 Form IDs in a single trigger, ALL of those IDs must present in a form (which is impossible).

If you want to create a trigger with an OR condition (e.g., “track this form” OR “this form” OR “this form), read this guide.

An a general advice: triple check your trigger conditions. Are there any typos? Those fields are case-sensitive (meaning that s and S are two different letters). Maybe you used the wrong variable in a trigger? Or maybe the variable returns another value in the moment of form submission?

GTM Form Submission Trigger Not Working: Final Words

And here we are at the end of yet another blog post in my “X not working?” series. Some of the previous entries are:

GTM preview mode not working
Youtube trigger not working
Realtime reports in GA not working, etc. You get the idea.

In today’s guide, we tackled a trigger that, unfortunately, does not always behave as we would like to. This is mainly due to the fact that developers code forms in any way they want. There are no standards. As a result, a single Form Submission trigger cannot cover all the use cases. In fact, based on my experience, this trigger is useless in 99% of cases 🙂

Therefore, in many situations, other solutions must be used.

Here’s a friendly reminder that should take a look at my in-depth guide on how to track forms with Google Tag Manager.

In this guide, I shared the most common issues and I’m pretty sure that the list is far from over. If you have a case that was not covered in this guide, let me know in the comments. I’ll be more than happy to update the blog post with more cases and make it even more useful.

Julius Fedorovicius

In Google Tag Manager Tips