Common emailing issues and solutions¶

This page lists the most common emailing issues and their solutions.

Odoo is not an email provider¶

Odoo does not function like a classic email inbox, such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.

While Odoo uses emails as a way to notify and communicate with users/customers, it is, by design, not a replacement for a dedicated email server. Therefore, it might not behave in the expected way when compared to a traditional email inbox.

The main differences are the following:

• By default, once a notification or transactional email (quote, invoice, direct message to a contact) is sent out successfully, the email object is deleted. The email message’s content lives in the chatter of the related record. It prevents cluttering the database with multiple copies of the content of the same email (when sent to multiple recipients) if the content is already present in the chatter.

• There is no concept of (blind) carbon copy ([B]CC). Odoo uses the concept of followers added to a chatter to automatically decide when and how a contact is notified or receives a copy of an email.

• Incoming emails are handled by checking if the TO email address is a valid email address in the Odoo database or, in case of a reply email, if there is a reference in the email header that matches a message sent from the Odoo database. All other emails will be bounced and not temporarily parked in a spam or quarantine folder. In other words, any email unrelated to an Odoo database is lost.

Outgoing emails¶

Changing the email address of the admin user account¶

When an Odoo database is created, the main admin account is assigned a placeholder email address. It is recommended to replace the admin email address with a valid email address to prevent outgoing email issues.

To do so, on the admin account, click the user icon, click My Profile (or Preferences), and update the Email field found under the Preferences tab. Either use any other email address or use your Odoo subdomain (e.g., company-name.odoo.com) and admin for the local-part (e.g., admin@company-name.odoo.com).

Delivery failure¶

When a message is sent, an (envelope) icon is displayed in the chatter. The icon turns red when delivery has failed for at least one recipient.

Left-click the envelope to display information about the delivery, and, if possible, the relevant error messages.

Click See Error Details to get extra information for the fail reason, if Odoo was able to process the original error or bounce email.

Click Send & close to retry sending the email to all toggled-on () recipients under the Try Again column. All toggled-off () recipients will be ignored.

Click Ignore all to ignore all currently failing emails and turn the envelope icon from red to white.

Unsent emails also appear in the Odoo email queue. To access it, activate the developer mode and go to Settings ‣ Technical ‣ Email: Emails.

Failed emails display the Delivery Failed status. Click Retry to put a failed email in the email queue again. It will then appear with the Outgoing status. The email will be sent again the next time the scheduled action for the email queue runs.

Optionally, queued emails can be sent immediately by clicking Send Now. Click Cancel Email to remove it from the email queue.

Common error messages¶

Daily limit reached¶

Odoo limits the number of emails that can be sent from an Odoo Online database. Most email service providers (e.g., Google, Yahoo, etc.) will blacklist Odoo’s server IP if Odoo’s email server is sending too many emails to addresses that do not exist or are no longer valid. It also applies to unsolicited spam emails sent through an Odoo database.

The default daily email limit varies between 5 and 200 emails. The exact limit is depends on several factors (subject to change):

• Type of database subscription (one app free, trial, paying subscription)

• Apps installed (i.e., Email Marketing, Marketing Automation)

• If a database migration is ongoing

If the daily limit is reached, you can:

• Contact Odoo Support to increase your email quota. The following factors will be taken into account:

  1. Numbers of users on the database

  2. Apps installed

  3. Bounce rate (the percentage of email addresses that did not receive emails because they were returned by an email server on their way to the final recipient).

  4. Whether your email aliases are correctly set up and use the appropriate custom domains.

     Tip

     When using a custom domain, verify that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are correctly configured so that Odoo’s email servers are allowed to send emails on your custom domain’s behalf.

• Use an external outgoing email server to be independent of Odoo’s email limit.

• Wait until the next day, and retry sending the email. To do so, activate the developer mode, go to Settings ‣ Technical ‣ Email: Emails, and click Retry next to the unsent email.

SMTP error¶

Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) is a standard used to transmit emails between email servers and/or email clients.

If you use an external STMP server to send emails, a standard set of SMTP error codes exists. While the code numbers are not specific to Odoo, the exact content of the error message might vary from email server to email server.

Mail Delivery Failed
Mail delivery failed via SMTP server 'None'.
SMTPDataError: 550
The from address does not match a verified Sender Identity. Mail cannot be sent until this
error is resolved. Visit https://sendgrid.com/docs/for-developers/sending-email/sender-identity/
to see the Sender Identity requirements

Usually, inputting the error message content in a Google search can yield information on what the root cause might be and how to correct the issue.

If the issue cannot be resolved and keeps occurring, contact Odoo Support.

No error populated¶

Odoo is not always capable of providing information on the reason a delivery failed. The different email providers implement their own policy on bounced emails, and it is not always possible for Odoo to interpret it correctly.

If there is a recurring problem with the same customer or the same domain, contact Odoo Support.

Execution time¶

The exact time of an email is sent is handled by a system utility cron (scheduled action) that can be used to schedule tasks to run automatically at predetermined intervals. Odoo uses this approach to send emails that are considered “not urgent” (i.e., newsletters formats such as mass mailing, marketing automation, and events). This avoids cluttering the mail servers and, instead, prioritizes individual communication.

By default, for the normal email queue, the Mail: Email Queue Manager cron runs every 60 minutes. The lowest running interval for a cron is 5 minutes. Odoo recommends an interval of 15 minutes to ensure proper operation. If the interval is too short, not all emails may be processed, which may cause the cron to timeout.

Emails that are considered urgent (from one person to another, such as sales orders, invoices, purchase orders, etc.) are sent immediately. They do not show up under Settings ‣ Technical ‣ Email: Emails, unless their delivery fails.

Email campaigns are sent as soon as possible (after clicking the Send button) or at a scheduled time (after clicking the Schedule button).

For the email marketing queue, the Mail Marketing: Process queue cron runs once a day, but will be automatically triggered early if a campaign is scheduled outside of this default frequency. If a mailing list contains a large number of recipients, triggering the cron manually multiple times is not recommended, as it will not accelerate the processing time and might create errors.

Email Marketing campaigns stuck in the queue¶

If multiple Email Marketing campaigns are put in the queue, they are processed in chronological order based on their creation date.

Example

If there are three campaigns: Campaign_1 (created 1st of January), Campaign_2 (created 2nd of January), and Campaign_3 (created 3rd of January), they are put in the queue by clicking Send on all three of them.

The cron will try to process Campaign_1, then Campaign_2, and finally Campaign_3. It will not start processing Campaign_2 until it finishes processing Campaign_1.

If an email campaign never leaves the queue, there might be an issue with the campaign at the top of the queue. To troubleshoot, we could remove Campaign_1 from the queue by clicking the Cancel button, and see if the two other campaigns are sent. Then we could try to fix Campaign_1 or contact Odoo Support.

Incoming emails¶

When there is an issue with incoming emails, there might not be an indication, per se, in Odoo. It is the sending email client, who tries to contact a database, that will get a bounce message (most of the time a 550: mailbox unavailable error message).

Email is not received¶

Information for Odoo Support¶

Here is a list of helpful information to include when reaching out to Odoo Support:

1. An export of the full email from the inbox. These are usually in .eml or .msg file formats containing technical information required for an investigation. The exact process to download the file depends on your third-party email provider.

   See also

   • Gmail Help Center: Trace an email with its full header

   • Microsoft Support: View internet message headers in Outlook

   When using a local email software (e.g., Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Outlook, etc.) to synchronize emails, it is usually possible to export the local copies of emails as EML/MSG files. Refer to the documentation of the software used for more information.

   Tip

   If possible, the EML/MSG file should be based on the original email that was sent and is failing or is causing issues.

   For incoming emails: if possible contact the original email sender and request an EML/MSG copy of the original email. Sending a copy of the original email (forwarded) only contains partial information related to the troubleshooting.

   For outgoing emails: either provide the EML/MSG of the email or specify what record in the database is affected (e.g., sales order number, contact name, invoice number) and the date/time when the email was sent (e.g., email sent on the 10th January 2024 11:45 AM Central European Time).

2. An explanation of the exact flow that is being followed to normally receive those emails in Odoo. Try to answer the following questions:

   • Is this a notification message from a reply being received in Odoo?

   • Is this a message being sent from the Odoo database?

   • Is there an incoming email server being used, or is the email being redirected/forwarded through a custom email server or provider?

   • Is there an example of an email that has been correctly forwarded?

   • Have you changed any email-related settings recently? Did it stop working after those changes?

3. An answer to the following questions:

   • Is it a generic issue or is it specific to a use case? If specific to a use case, which one?

   • Is it working as expected? In case the email is sent using Odoo, the bounce email should reach the Odoo database and display the red envelope.