Skip to main content
Print

When an email is not sent or not received

Updated

This article lists the messages the plugin shows when it cannot send an email, what each one means, and what to check when an email was sent but the customer says it never arrived.

Messages when sending fails

These appear in the Send Custom Email window, or in the Preview & Test box for test emails. When one appears, nothing was sent and nothing was recorded on the order.

Message What it means and what to do
This order has no valid billing email address. The order’s billing email is empty or not a valid address. Edit the order, correct the billing email, and send again.
This template is not published yet, so it can’t be sent to a customer. You can still preview it or send yourself a test email. The template was switched to draft or moved to the Trash after the page loaded. Publish it again, or choose another template.
Email template not found. The template was deleted after the page loaded. Reload the page and choose another one.
This template has no email subject yet. Please add one before sending. Add an Email Subject to the template and save it.
This template’s attached file could not be found. Please re-select the attachment on the template. The attached file was deleted from the Media Library. See Attaching a file to a template.
The email could not be sent. Please check your site’s outgoing mail (SMTP) configuration. WordPress could not hand the email over for delivery. See “Sent but not received” below; the same checks apply.
Order not found. The order was deleted after the page loaded.
You do not have permission to do this. Your user role cannot send these emails. See Who can create and send emails.
Missing or inaccessible template. Shown for a test email when the template no longer exists, for example because it was deleted after the page loaded. Reload the page.
Something went wrong. Please try again. The request did not complete, for example because you were logged out or the connection dropped. The email may still have gone out, so reload the page and check the order’s Custom Email status and History before you send again.
No valid email address to send the test to. The Test email address is not a valid address.

For a test email, the “could not be sent” message reads “The test email could not be sent.” followed by the same advice.

After a bulk send, the notice counts the failures and names the reason instead, for example “Custom email sent to 10 orders. 2 orders were not emailed because they have no valid billing email address.” See Sending a template to many orders at once.

Sent but not received

“Email sent.” means WordPress accepted the email and passed it on for delivery. Whether it reaches the inbox depends on your site’s mail setup and the customer’s email provider. Check these in order:

  1. Ask the customer to look in their spam or junk folder.
  2. Check the billing email on the order for a typing mistake.
  3. Send a test email from the template to your own address. See Previewing and testing a template.
  4. Check whether your store’s other emails, such as order confirmations, arrive. The plugin sends through the same route, so a problem there affects both.
  5. Use an SMTP plugin that keeps an email log to see whether the email left your site. Mail sent through an SMTP service usually arrives more reliably than mail sent by the web server itself.

Other things that look like a problem

  • No Custom Email column on the Orders list: open Screen Options at the top right and tick Custom Email. If it is not listed there, your user role cannot send these emails; see Who can create and send emails.
  • A Multipart email arrives as HTML only: see the note about Post SMTP in Choosing the email type.
  • A template is missing from the window or the bulk actions: only published templates are listed, and the list is loaded with the page. Publish the template and reload the Orders page.
  • No Order Emails menu: your user role cannot manage WooCommerce. See Who can create and send emails.
Table of Contents