# Progressive Forms Improvement

**URL:** <https://community.hubspot.com/t/progressive-forms-improvement/99898>\
**Category:** Lead Capture Tools\
**Tags:** enterprise\
**Created:** [February 9, 2024, 9:00pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/progressive-forms-improvement/99898 "2024-02-09T21:00:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cmccarron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a5b964/32.png) [@cmccarron](https://community.hubspot.com/u/cmccarron)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 9:00pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/progressive-forms-improvement/99898/1 "2024-02-09T21:00:38Z")

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Hi!  
I’d like to be able to present contacts with a form that just consists of their email address and then applies progressive fields if the contact doesn’t already exist in our database. Something like if record ID is unknown progress to add first name/last name/whatever.  
This would allow us to make the form submission easy for our existing contacts while allowing new contacts to complete the form as well without missing properties we need in our database or having to send them some sort of followup form to fill out after the fact.

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**Author:** ![karstenkoehler](https://d10pqhm3lwygmk.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.hubspot.com/karstenkoehler/32/68554_2.png) [@karstenkoehler](https://community.hubspot.com/u/karstenkoehler)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 9:33pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/progressive-forms-improvement/99898/2 "2024-02-09T21:33:24Z")

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Hi @cmccarron,

This can be done with progressive fields: [Use progressive fields in forms (legacy)](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/forms/use-progressive-fields-in-forms)

Best regards!

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**Author:** ![cmccarron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a5b964/32.png) [@cmccarron](https://community.hubspot.com/u/cmccarron)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2024, 9:48pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/progressive-forms-improvement/99898/3 "2024-02-09T21:48:18Z")

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Hi!  
I may be overlooking a capability but I need the fields to populate if the email address hasn’t already been submitted to our CRM and these settings look like they only trigger the progressive fields when it has been entered before. Am I misreading?

 ![Screenshot 2024-02-09 at 4.46.36 PM.png](https://d2qpr2jzcazej7.cloudfront.net/original/3X/5/f/5f88288c0cc752937f5a337cc5afb1cf10c790ea.png)

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**Author:** ![karstenkoehler](https://d10pqhm3lwygmk.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.hubspot.com/karstenkoehler/32/68554_2.png) [@karstenkoehler](https://community.hubspot.com/u/karstenkoehler)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2024, 5:51am UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/progressive-forms-improvement/99898/4 "2024-02-10T05:51:26Z")

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@cmccarron I slightly misunderstood the nuances of your question. This is unfortunately not possible and likely won’t be for a simple reason: Forms cannot look up information in the CRM. They capture and pass on information, one way. If they were able to look up information, that would be a way for externals to check whether certain contacts are in your CRM.

Any solution that cross-references the CRM would have to be behind a login.

Best regards!