How to resend an order confirmation when the initial one wasn't sent?

[KimM]

Help!

I have been running a Shopify store for a couple of years now and no issues. Occasionally I get a call from a customer who has not received an order confirmation email (usually it has gone to their spam or junk email) but I can go into their order, go to the thread in the timeline and resend the confirmation if necessary. Today a customer called querying where the order confirmation was, but I noticed in the timeline that it was never sent - I have never seen this before! I checked the email address with them, all good, but the issue is, how can I resend the confirmation? Usually there is a button in the timeline, but if the first confirmation has not been sent, you cant click that button as its not there. There is nothing in the drop down menus either.

Any suggestions?

Regards KIM

[Kimi]

Hi, @KimM!

This situation can happen if the customer went through checkout, and successfully paid for their order, without inputting their email address in the process. An order confirmation sent via email from the Shopify admin would only be done if there was an email address attached to the order when in was initially placed. If an email address was added in after the order has been placed, the system won't be able to subsequently send one through. You also won't have the option to resend an email order confirmation if one was never sent through in the first place for that same order.

If the order was created through a Draft order, and the customer account had no email address added to it when the Draft order was initially created, then the same logic applies as above.

If the customer is wanting a confirmation of their order, you could email them a manual invoice of their order. At this stage there isn't a way within the Shopify admin natively to resend an order confirmation email if none was sent through in the first place. I definitely do see how being able to do this is a useful option to have within our admin though, so I will send this as a feature request to our developers. We're constantly looking to improve our platform, so perhaps this is something we can incorporate in the future. Please note that although I will be submitting this request, we're unable to track it as this is an internal process that our developer team oversees. However there's currently a public facing document that you can check for new features that has been added to Shopify, you can access that website here: Shopify Changelog.

[KimM]

Thanks so much for looking into this. I have sent the customer a manual invoice as you suggested.

The customer was new and placed a phone order. He knew what he wanted so gave me the product name first, so I created the draft order, then asked for his customer details. I added/created the new customer from the Draft order, so perhaps that was the issue, although I did all this before taking payment and putting the order through. It is strange, because I thought I had done this before and it had been fine. Next time maybe I will create the customer first, then go into Draft Orders and create the order - that should be ok I guess. Sometimes though it’s just about quickly responding to your customers needs rather than fussing around and asking for all the details beforehand. I think it would be a good addition to remedy this issue.

[Kimi]

No worries at all, @KimM. I can totally understand your perspective there, too. Like you say, sometimes as business owners we'd just like to attend to customers as quickly as we can! Some details can definitely be missed in the process of creating an order manually too, and I've definitely done this before myself.

I find that it's best practice to include the customer's email address onto their order, even if they've given you their contact number to attach to the order. This will ensure that if the customer will ever need an email copy of their order confirmation, you'll be able to re-send one easily from within the order page if the email address was already inputted to begin with!

[mikeyonaboat]

@Kimi did this ever come through ? still a big issue and seems relatively simple to fix? for example, maybe it's prepopulated when you click contact the customer

[Kimi]

Hi, @mikeyonaboat.

Any feedback we share with our team is prioritised based on the needs of our merchants at large.

Shopify is ever-growing and constantly looking to better our platform, which is made possible with feedback we receive from merchants like yourself. As this happens on a large scale, it may take time for our team to go through all feedback and ship out any relevant updates or new features to the platform.

In saying this, I’ll go ahead and pass on the feedback that you've shared here with us to our developers too. Feel free to save our changelog here so you can keep an eye out for any new updates to our platform.

[DDD4]

HELLO SHOPIFY PLEASE FIX THIS ISSUE ASAP. DO YOUR JOB, WE ARE ALL WAITING FOR THIS EASY FIX. THIS SHOULD BE EASY CODING TO DO, MAKE THIS A PRIORITY. ITS BEEN A WHOLE YEAR WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING??? oh yeah probably creating an app to charge us with so that the app can fix the issue instead of you guys actually fixing it for free. Pathetic the amount of times i get on the internet to see if a solution exists and Shopify still for years haven't fixed the simple issue. Useless

[sgr]

This still isn't fixed.

[DDD4]

No because shopify doesn't ever fix any simple issue. They just bank on us relying on outside resources or dealing with bugs for YEARS. 

[Anishprasai]

2024 and this problem still exists. Shocking!!. It gives a very unprofessional image to my business, not being able to re-send a order confirmation email is just pathetic, other platform are implementing AI and here i am not being able to send a order confirmation email???

Be better!!

[HOA_cmh]

I would also love to see a fix for this. A customer emailed me this morning because she hadn’t received an email confirmation. Upon taking a closer look, I realized it’s because she entered her email incorrectly, but I couldn’t find a way to resend the order confirmation email to the new email address. Thanks!

[ItsMeRonT]

I hit the same error today more than 2 years later.  I'm surprised the answer to, "Can you send a confirmation email after you enter the email address for an already processed order?" is no! 

This doesn't happen much but it does happen.  Not being able to send a confirmation makes shop owners look bad.  I solved this problem by sending a regular email with a screen shot of the order page. I would like to encourage the development team to please add this feature to the next sprint!  There is a good menu on the order "More Actions" it is a fine place for Resend Order Confirmation that works even if there was no email address added to the order when it was originally placed, or better yet if there is no email ask for one, with a checkbox to update the email on the customer.

[KimM]

The other question I get asked quite alot too is: Can you please send me a tax invoice copy of my order? Customer has purchased the item as a corporate gift, and needs the tax invoice to give to the accountant. There is a tax invoice, BUT you have to find it. If you have the "Order Printer" app installed, you go to that under the "More actions" tab and save the order as a pdf, then send it to your customer. 

It seems to me there should be a much easier way...surely dealing with customers in the easiest way is the whole reason Shopify exists, but maybe I'm an idealist. 😞

[boozieandco]

Hello! I have been running into this issue just today and I found a workaround. You can go to order > more actions > view order status page and send this link to the customer.

[ItsMeRonT]

This is a good workaround, but not a solution.  Did you verify that the user could open your link to that page?  The best solution would be for shopify to fix this.  I'm not sure how to get the dev's attention but I suggest more comments and likes on this post.  If you found your way here let them know.

[boozieandco]

Yes, anyone can open that link. It's definitely not a solution and it is unbelievable that something that simple hasn't been fixed for years! 

[enanoRed]

Why doesn't the Timeline > View Email > Resend Email button work? That works for us just fine. Or is there a unique scenario that I am missing here where this option doesn't work?

[ItsMeRonT]

Hello enanoRed,

That works fine if the order confirmation was sent in the first place. You
can resend it without any problems. The issue here is that if there was no
email address when the order was placed there is no resend option. There
is also no way to generate a new order confirmation.

To reproduce. Place an order. Then add the customer email address. Now
try to send an order confirmation.

[rwildenberg]

How is it possible that this can't be added in almost three years of development of one of the largest webshop environments?

Seriously guys, this is possible in every normal system, webshop or ERP, it's nothing more than add one button Re-send, can be fixed within 5 minutes.

crazy that you need to tell a customer you aren't able to send an order confirmation if he/she has forgotten to fill in the emailaddress when confirming the order.

[ItsMeRonT]

Exactly.  I was shocked.  You wouldn't believe the amount of time I spent looking for this.  It had to be there somewhere!  I was sure especially after seeming the resend button on orders that sent it in the first place.  I was really glad to find this report in the community, just so that I knew I could stop looking for the button!  Shopify please fix this!  

[MTAUSTRALIA]

@Shopify guys this really needs to be implemented. 😅