Can I delete additional customer email address fields?
If you use the WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients plugin to create additional customer email addresses, then you may wish to delete some or all of these in future. For example:
- You might delete the plugin completely, or;
- You might want to reduce the number of additional email addresses while continuing to use the plugin.
Either way, we have coded the plugin so that you can do this without any problems.
How to remove additional email addresses
You can reduce the number of additional email addresses on the WooCommerce Multiple Email Recipients plugin settings page. Simply change the number of customer email addresses as required.
(Remember: this field shows the total number of customer email addresses. The first is added by WooCommerce itself and cannot be removed.)
What happens to existing customer data?
If you remove an additional email address field which is already being used to store customer email addresses, then this will not be deleted from the WordPress database when you remove the field. However, once you have removed the field, it won't be possible to view or edit the additional email address - either from the 'Edit User' screen in the WordPress admin, or the Account or Checkout pages in the front end.
If you increase the number of email address fields again in future, then any customer email address fields that are still stored in this field will become visible again.
An example
For example, let's say that you install the plugin and set up 3 customer email addresses: the default WooCommerce field, plus Email Address 2 and Email Address 3. A customer uses these to store 3 different email addresses in their account.
If you later reduce the number of customer email addresses to 2, then the customer will only see the first 2 email addresses on their account page, and will only receive emails to these 2 email addresses. Email Address 3 will remain in the WordPress database, but will not be visible or used for anything.
In the future, if you increase the number of customer email addresses back up to 3 or more, then the customer will see Email Address 3 in their account again, and will receive new order emails to that address.