How do I show or hide a field based on the answer to another field?

Last updated: September 25, 2026

Use a field rule to show or hide one field based on the answer to another. For example: ask the employee whether they want to upload an existing certification, then only show the file-upload field if they say yes.

Open the field's rule section

  1. Open your form in the form builder. Find the field you want to show or hide conditionally — that's the field whose visibility depends on another answer.

  2. Click the field. The field editor opens in the sidebar.

  3. Scroll to the Rule section in the sidebar.

Build the show/hide condition

  1. Click Edit to open the rule builder dialog.

  2. Set the Effect to either Show or Hide. Show means the field appears only when the condition is met; Hide means the field disappears when the condition is met. Pick whichever reads more naturally for your case — they're functionally equivalent if you flip the operator.

Operator logic is easy to flip the wrong way. Show with equal Yes displays the field when the employee selects Yes. Switch to not equal Yes and the field displays for everyone except people who answered yes. The two configurations look identical until you actually try both paths in preview, so always test both before deploying.

  1. Add a condition. Under Effect, click Add condition.

  2. Pick the fact — the field whose answer drives the rule. The dropdown lists other fields on this form plus your account's custom properties. For the certification example, pick the question field Would you like to upload a copy of your existing certification? — its path is something like form.existing_certification.

  3. Pick the operator — how to compare the fact's value. Common picks: equal for an exact match, not equal for the opposite, in if the fact's value should match any of several values, contains for multi-select fields. See 📄 Rule operators for the full list. For the certification example, pick equal.

  4. Enter the value the fact must match. For the certification example, type Yes.

For more than one condition, click Add condition again. By default all conditions must be true (AND). To require any one to be true, switch the group to OR via the toggle.

Save and preview

  1. Click Done to close the rule builder. The rule appears in the field's settings as a summary (e.g., Show badge plus the condition).

  2. Click Save at the bottom of the field-editor sidebar to persist the field changes.

  3. Preview the form. Click Preview in the top right of the form builder, then change the value on the controlling field. The dependent field should appear or disappear in real time.

Verify

Walk through both paths in preview: select the value that should reveal the dependent field, then select a different value and confirm it hides. In the certification example, answering Yes reveals the file-upload field; answering No hides it.

If the field doesn't behave the way you expect, the most common cause is a flipped operator (equal vs. not equal). Re-open the rule and read it back as a sentence — "show this field when form.existing_certification equals Yes" — and confirm that matches your intent.

Renaming a field breaks the rules that point at it

A rule references the controlling field by its path — form.existing_certification — stored as plain text. Renaming that field's path updates its PDF mappings and any subfields, but it does not update rules on other fields that point at the old path. Those rules keep referencing a path that no longer exists.

Nothing flags it. The rule saves, the form publishes, and the rule builder shows the stale path as an ordinary selection. The break only surfaces when an employee opens the form.

At that point the missing value reads as empty, so the rule stops responding to the employee's answer and collapses to a fixed outcome:

  • Show with equal — the field never appears, no matter what the employee answers.

  • Hide with equal — the field always appears.

The second case is the one that strands people. A required field that always shows and can't be satisfied holds the page below complete, which blocks every page after it. The employee submits, gets returned to the same page, submits again, and never sees an error telling them why. A signature page that loops instead of advancing is the classic symptom.

To fix it, open each field whose rule referenced the renamed field, re-pick the controlling field in the condition, and save. When you rename a field, walk the form's other rules before you publish — that check takes a minute and there's no automated one to fall back on.

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