Gravity Forms Multiple Dates Field Setup Guide

The Gravity Forms Multiple Dates Field Premium Add-on adds a Multiple Dates field to Gravity Forms. Visitors see a calendar and click the days they want; each click adds a day or takes it away again. You decide how many days people must and may choose, which days can be chosen at all, and how many entries can choose the same day. This guide covers installation, every field setting, how the dates are saved and shown, calculations and merge tags, the date list for staff, and answers to common questions.

What the field does

• One calendar, several separate days. Not a start and end date: any set of days, such as three Tuesdays and a Friday. The calendar shows one month or two months side by side.
• Limits on the number of days. At least and at most. The calendar stops at the maximum and tells the visitor why.
• Limits on which days. Earliest and latest date, closed week days, closed dates, ranges and yearly dates. Days that cannot be chosen are greyed out.
• Places per date. How many entries can choose the same day. Full days are greyed out, and the count is checked again on your server when the form is sent.
• Days in calculations. In a Number field formula the field counts as the number of chosen days.
• A date list for staff. Forms → Multiple Dates shows how many entries chose each day and how many places are left.

Requirements and installation

1. WordPress 6.5 or newer, PHP 7.4 or newer and Gravity Forms 2.8 or newer (tested with 2.9 and 3.1).
2. Upload the add-on zip under Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin and activate it.
3. Go to Forms → Settings → Multiple Dates, enter your license key and click Activate License. The field button and the Multiple Dates page appear once the licence is active.

The add-on needs no account with any outside service and sends no data anywhere. The only requests it makes are the GravityExtra licence check and update check, the same as every GravityExtra add-on.

Step 1: add the field

Open a form in the form editor and click Multiple Dates in the Advanced Fields group. The field arrives with the label “Choose your dates” and sensible defaults: no minimum or maximum, the earliest date set to today, no closed days and no limit per date. Change the label to something your visitors will recognise, such as “Camp days”, “Sessions” or “Delivery days”, and add a short description that says how many days they can pick and what greyed-out days mean.

In the editor the field shows a plain box with a note instead of the calendar. On the form itself, visitors see the calendar.

Step 2: the field settings

All settings are on the General tab of the field, under the description.

Number of dates

At least is the smallest number of days a visitor must choose once they choose any; At most is the largest. Leave either one empty for no limit. A field can never hold more than 366 days. If the field is required, the visitor must choose at least one day; set At least as well when one day is not enough. When the maximum is reached, the calendar does not add another day and shows a short message, so the visitor knows to remove a day first.

Dates that can be chosen

Earliest and Latest accept three kinds of value:

• a fixed date such as 2026-07-06, for a season or a term that has a fixed start and end;
• today, so past days cannot be chosen;
• a number of days from today, such as +2 (from the day after tomorrow, to give you time to prepare) or +90 (up to about three months ahead). A minus sign counts back, for forms about days that already happened.

“Today” is worked out in your site’s time zone, as set under Settings → General, so a visitor in another country sees the same days as your office. The calendar opens on the month of the earliest date (or of the first chosen day), and the arrows stop at the earliest and latest months.

Closed week days

Tick the days of the week that can never be chosen, such as Saturday and Sunday for a weekday camp, or Monday for a venue that is closed on Mondays.

Closed dates

Type one entry per line. Three forms are understood:

• a single day: 2026-08-31;
• a range, both ends included: 2026-12-24..2027-01-02 (you can also write 2026-12-24 to 2027-01-02);
• a yearly date, month and day: 12-25 closes 25 December every year.

Lines the add-on cannot read are ignored, so check a new list on the form before you share it. Closed days are greyed out and struck through on the calendar.

Places per date

Set how many entries can choose the same day, for example 24 children per camp day or 6 volunteers per shift day. Leave it empty or at 0 for no limit. Entries in the trash or marked as spam do not count; deleting or trashing an entry frees its days again.

Full days are greyed out with a hatched background and the words “Fully booked” for screen readers. The calendar shows the state at the moment the page was loaded, so the add-on counts again when the form is sent. If another visitor took the last place in the meantime, the form shows “… is fully booked. Please choose another date.” and keeps everything else the visitor typed. The count on submit runs under a short database lock, so two people who send at exactly the same moment cannot both take the last place.

Places per date does not hold a place while someone is still filling in the form. If you also take payment, the entry is created when the form is sent, as with any Gravity Forms payment add-on.

Calendar

Week starts on Monday or Sunday. Months shown is one or two; with two, the months sit side by side on wide screens and one under the other on phones. Month and day names follow the site language.

Date format in entries and e-mails

Choose how dates are written everywhere people read them: the site date format, dd/mm/yyyy, mm/dd/yyyy, yyyy-mm-dd, dd.mm.yyyy, “Monday 6 July 2026” or “Mon 6 Jul 2026”. The chosen days under the calendar, the entry, notifications, merge tags and the CSV export all use it.

Error message

The standard Custom Validation Message setting replaces every message of the field with your own text. Without it, the field uses clear messages such as “Please choose at least 2 dates.” or “Sat 14 Nov 2026 is not available. Please choose another date.”

What visitors see

The calendar shows open days in grey, chosen days in blue, and closed, past or full days greyed out. A click on an open day chooses it; a second click removes it. Under the calendar the field says how many days are chosen and lists each one with a small button to remove it, plus Clear all when there are two or more.

The calendar works with a keyboard: Tab moves into the calendar, the arrow keys move between open days (closed days are skipped, and the calendar turns the month when needed), and Enter or Space chooses or removes the focused day. Each day is announced with its full date and whether it is chosen, closed or full.

If JavaScript is switched off in the browser, the field shows a text box instead. Visitors can type dates as YYYY-MM-DD, separated by commas, and the server checks them with the same rules.

How the dates are saved and shown

The entry keeps the dates as ISO dates in date order, separated by a comma and a space, for example 2026-11-10, 2026-11-11, 2026-11-13. A day chosen twice is kept once. This saved form makes searching, sorting and conditional logic simple, and it never changes with the site language.

• Entry screen: a list of the dates in your display format.
• Entry list: the first three dates and “+2 more” when there are more.
• {all_fields} in notifications: a list in HTML e-mails, one date per line in text e-mails.
• CSV export: the dates in your display format, separated by commas.
• Entry search: choose the field, “contains” and a date such as 2026-11-10.

Calculations: price per day

In a Number field with Enable Calculation ticked, use the merge tag of the Multiple Dates field in the formula. It counts as the number of chosen days. For a camp at $45 a day, with the field ID 3:

{Camp days:3} * 45

The total updates in the browser as days are clicked, and Gravity Forms works it out again on the server when the form is sent, with the same count. You can use the result in a Product field with a calculated price, so payment add-ons charge the right amount. A field hidden by conditional logic counts as 0.

Merge tags

Use the field merge tag in confirmations, notifications, feeds and anywhere Gravity Forms accepts merge tags. Add a modifier after the field ID to change what it gives:

• {Camp days:3}: the dates in your display format, separated by commas;
• {Camp days:3:count}: the number of dates, such as 3;
• {Camp days:3:first} and {Camp days:3:last}: the earliest and latest chosen date;
• {Camp days:3:list}: a bulleted list in HTML e-mails, one date per line in text;
• {Camp days:3:iso}: the saved ISO form, handy for webhooks and other systems.

An example confirmation: “Booked {Camp days:3:count} days, starting {Camp days:3:first}: {Camp days:3}.”

Conditional logic

Other fields can follow the Multiple Dates field. Use “contains” with an ISO date to show a field when a certain day is chosen, for example a lunch choice for the day of the trip, or “is not” with an empty value to show something once any day is chosen. The field itself can be shown or hidden by other fields like any Gravity Forms field.

Forms → Multiple Dates: the date list

This page lists, for one form at a time, every day that entries chose in each Multiple Dates field: the date, the number of entries and, when places per date is set, the places left or a Full badge. Past days are hidden unless you tick Include past dates. Each row links to the entries that chose that day, and Download CSV saves the list as a spreadsheet file.

The page is open to users who can view Gravity Forms entries (and to administrators). It only reads entries: it changes nothing.

Frequently asked questions

Can visitors pick a range, such as a whole week?

They click each day. For a start and end date with every day in between, a date range field fits better; Multiple Dates is for separate days.

Do closed days and limits apply to dates typed in by hand?

Yes. Every rule is checked on your server when the form is sent, whatever the browser sends.

What happens when I change the closed days after entries arrived?

Existing entries keep their dates. New choices follow the new rules. The date list still counts the old entries.

Does the limit per date reserve places for payments that are still pending?

An entry counts as soon as it is created and is not in the trash or spam. Entries waiting for payment count too, so the place is held while the payment completes.

Can I edit the dates of an entry?

Yes, on the entry screen with Edit. The value is saved in the same tidy form.

Does it work with multi-page forms and AJAX forms?

Yes. The calendar starts again on each page load and after an AJAX validation error, with the chosen days kept.

What is removed when I uninstall the add-on?

The add-on settings and the licence data. Entries and the dates in them are never touched.

Need help?

See the Multiple Dates Field add-on page for plans, or contact GravityExtra support from your account with the form export and a short description of what you expected.