How does user change their Email address?

I have a “My Account” page with the User Profile block. When the user visits that page, the Email address is read-only. How can the user update their Email address? And if they did, how would that affect all of the records they created in Airtable?

Thanks!

Bumping this! I’m building a community for students, and sometimes they graduate and stop checking their school emails. This would be really helpful if we can let students change their school email to personal email.

Hi there,

I’m having the same issues. I’m using the ‘update profile’ block, and the user can change any field except for email. The email field appears to be read-only and therefore cannot be changed.

How can a user update their email address?

@datom we avoided doing it given it was an important field connecting users in softr system, stripe and in airtable. Do you get such requests often ?

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I don’t think it’s only about how often or rare the request to change an email is. It’s also about how serious a problem it is when a user wants to change their email and can’t. Today their only option would be to sign up again from scratch, losing any context that might have been stored under the old account. That is equivalent, from the user’s point of view, to data loss.

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Bang on. Certainly wouldn’t expect this to be a common thing, but it does happen and users would expect to be able to simply change their email address if they needed to (as they can with most other services/platforms), rather than having to sign up from scratch with their new address.

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(post deleted by author)

Noted and added to our ToDos. When we do this we need to make sure the change is propagated to Softr/Airtable/Stripe… and perhaps the app owner needs to decide if this feature is enabled or not.

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I like this “not able to edit email” by default because I changes would cause a lot of trouble. Relations, filters and visibility options could stop working properly (and this would be my own fault, not Softr’s). Still, I think we need this.

Right now the workaround is a form where users can make requests, and I change them manually in Airtable. And send out notification emails to both addresses to make sure it’s not a hijack. In the future this would be an automated process where the new email is activated only after it’s activated via link.

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That’s the workaround we also suggest for now :slight_smile:

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@christian_k - Can you explain a little more in depth here? I was under the impression that the users table in Airtable was a one way sync. When I update the email on a test user in the solution I’m working on currently, their magic link stops working (as there is no matched email to a softr user). Additionally, if I then regen the magic link it actually adds a new user row in Airtable. Only by deleting that row and changing the email back to what it was originally and running a regen on the magic link again (from softr) does that user link back up with their old records.

I’m probably missing something simple but it doesn’t seem possible to update an email address for an existing user using the method that you’re describing.

@artur - Moreover, this should be a standard feature that is accessible via an endpoint of the API. By design most people building solutions that have a customer facing side are probably using another system or two that identify clients by email address. If there is a change in one of those, people need to be able to propagate that change to whatever Softr solution they have programmatically.

Hey, is there an update with respect to this feature request? When I e.g. let a user change his email in airtable via the edit functionality of softr it does not change the email in the softr user database. The same applies to the user name. How can I change the email or user name in the softr database if needed?

Hey @Seb,

Let me sub in for Artur.

The option has not been implemented yet, but as Artur mentioned it is in our ToDos. We should think of a better solution which will allow the app owner deciding whether the option can be enabled or not. Will make sure to keep you posted in case we have an update regarding this.

Just adding in my interest in this feature too.

We have 15,000 potential users in our database and every now and then we do get a person who wants to change their email. Would be nice if they could do it in Softr.

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Hey @Cantrall,

Thanks for the feature request. I can’t give you the exact timeline of when it will be ready, but I can tell you that it’s already in the works.

Any updates on this feature? I have gotten so many requests from my users about this

Hey @flavi,

Unfortunately, no updates on this yet.

Any updates about this key feature ? A user just subscribed on my app with a wrong mail, how to correct it ?

I get requests to fix this CONSTANTLY. I’ve done everything in my power to build steps prior to account creation to avoid typos and whatnot but it’s still unavoidable at my company. I just finished typing this whole thing up for myself to reference because I’ve been falling behind on all the requests I keep getting to change emails.

When staff have an account created in softr, we try our best to ensure the email is correct first. Sometimes it’s impossible to avoid (name changes etc.)

How does Softr relate to Airtable?

Inside airtable, we have staff records in a table (Centricity Staff). Each record represents an employee and must have their name fields as well as their email address to be able to create an account in Softr.

Just because a staff record exists in airtable does NOT mean they automatically have a softr account

  • We do not want to automatically create accounts for all staff because we keep old employee names in there for record keeping etc. We just mark them as “inactive” when they leave org

We MANUALLY create the staff softr account by triggering an automation that sends an API call to softr to generate the account.

It sends over the name, the email we have listed in airtable, and generates the account with a temporary password that is shared with the employee via a separate email automation that is sent after their account is generated.

Once the account is created in softr’s user account listing, it will attempt to sync that user account by looking at all of the records inside of airtable and matching the email address to the staff record. This is how a logged in user’s actions are tracked.

There is zero method of changing the email address linked for a softr account at this time. It is absurd, I know.

  • When you change the email inside of airtable, softr will then realize “oh shoot where’d this record go? I’m dumb and only look at emails. I need my synced airtable record!” and then it creates a new record in airtable with the original email that the softr account has listed.

If you delete an account inside of softr that has already synced to a staff record inside of airtable, it will DELETE the ENTIRE airtable record.


How to change the email so it is correct and staff can access softr & receive email notifications from airtable:

Change the email inside of airtable

You have to basically wait and nudge softr to re-sync with airtable. Usually, I make a minor edit and then double check inside of airtable to confirm it made the new lame duplicate account. When you change email inside airtable, softr is going to try and sync and then be like where’d it go?! You made the staff record invisible to softr.

Confirm the new blank staff record has been created (it’ll just be an empty record with the old email filled in), and then DELETE the Softr account

Yes, this sucks because it means that the user will have to repeat the signup workflow. Annoying. No way for me to get around this.

Reset the Airtable Staff Record: Revert the softr account status to re-trigger account creation with CORRECT email

It’ll just run the same automation again and recreate the account with right credentials

Confirm the blank staff record was deleted in airtable when you deleted Softr

run de-dupe if you feel fancy and extra to confirm


Ensure staff understand that in order to change the email on file they will have to re-complete the account setup process.

  • Set password again (use the saved password you already created if you can)
  • Re-confirm account set-up is completed (or else they won’t be able to access rest of app)

It’s a pain in the butt for everyone, so we should all strive to reduce the need for this by diligently trying to get email correct the first time around.

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