Heads Up: This is the documentation for Joomla 3

We recommend using the Documentation for Joomla 5

It is more up-to-date and extensive. Most of it applies retrospectively to Joomla 3.

Joomla 6 Notice

We are pleased to announce that all our Joomla extensions have been compatible with Joomla 6 since October 14th, 2025.

For those currently upgrading from Joomla 3 to 4: Instructions for Joomla 4 migration can be found here:

There are standalone documentations Visforms Joomla 4, Visforms Joomla 5 and Visforms Joomla 6.

Search in fields that are not displayed - Frontend Data Views

This feature is part of the Visforms Subscription and not available in the free Visforms version..

The Visforms Subscription adds powerful search filters to your frontend data views. Since the Visforms Subscription 3.1.0 it is now possible to include fields into the search, without actually displaying the fields in the data list. This is achieved with a new field option "Only for use in search" which you can find in the field configuration, tab "Advanced" in the "Usage" block.

Use field in search only

In order to make this feature work properly you have to make sure that

  • You have set the option "Display Data in Frontend" to "List only" or "List and Detail"
  • You have set the option "Only for use in search" to "yes"

If you want to use this feature with data views, that are created with the Content Plugin Data View, you must add a new parameter to your plugin string, too. Please see the plugin documentation for further instructions.

Please note: This feature does not work with the menu item type "Visforms >> My Submissions"

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