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How do I create a Donate button with a text field?

In some cases donation collectors may be legally obliged to obtain information about their donors, such as name, address, employer and occupation. The PayPal Donation button can be set up to collect this data automatically, and it will be included in your payment confirmation emails. As the "employer" and "occupation" elements (or any other custom data), aren't collected by PayPal by default, the user needs to set up a couple of text boxes to gather this information.

Because the button designer tool does allow interactive elements for Donation buttons, it needs to be done through a different flow. Here's how:  

  1. Open the PayPal buttons page.
  2. Select the Buy Now button type.
  3. Under Product name, enter the name of the organization, fund, or campaign being donated to (such as "John Doe for President Campaign Fund").
  4. Leave the Price field blank.
  5. Select Add a message box for custom requests (or Add a drop-down menu if you prefer).
  6. Enter the name of the data you want to collect in the Name your message box. For example, if you want to collect the buyer's employer, enter "Employer." The Button Preview shows the new text field.
  7. If you want to add a second text field, repeat Steps 5 and 6.
  8. Under Optional tracking, deselect Save button at PayPal.
  9. Select Save and Create Button.
  10. The HTML code for your button is displayed.
  11. Deselect Code Protection.
  12. Select Copy Code and paste the code into your favorite text editor, such as Notepad.
  13. In the code, find _xclick and change it to _donations.
  14. Find btn_buynowCC_LG.gif and change it to btn_donateCC_LG.gif.
    1. If you prefer a version of the button that doesn't have credit card logos, use btn_donate_LG.gif instead.
    2. btn_buynowCC_LG.gif shows up twice in the code. 
  15. Copy the modified code to your website.
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