Shipping Address - how to stop people adding a PO Box

[Dolo]

Hello,
We do not ship to PO Boxes and I wondered if there is a way I can add a note where you add your shipping address to alert people to this?

[Ash · Accepted solution]

Hey, @Dolo!

Ash here from the Shopify team. Welcome to the Shopify Community! 

I understand you want to add a notice for customers to let them know that you don't ship to PO boxes. This is absolutely possible to achieve, and I'll provide some steps below for you to follow. In order to add a note to this area of the checkout, we're going to be using the Language Editor to add/change some wording in your theme. Here are the steps:

1. First head over to the Online Store > Themes section of the admin 
2. Locate the theme you want to add the note to and click Actions > Edit Languages 
3. Within the Language Editor, search "address1 label" 
4. The "address1 label" field is the placeholder text that appears in the checkout when a customer is entering their shipping address. 
5. By entering your own text, you can change the placeholder to include a notice such as "Address (Please note we do not ship to PO boxes)" 
6. Save the Language Editor, and the changes should be live on your theme 

Another place you can leave a notice is above the shipping options available in the checkout. This may be handy as a second notice in case a customer still enters a PO box and proceeds through the customer information step of the checkout. To add a note above the shipping options, search the Language Editor for "Shipping method notice". Here's what that looks like in the Language Editor: 

and on the live checkout: 

Since each theme is different, there may be slight variation in the exact names of the fields you need to edit in the Language Editor. If you have any trouble locating the areas you'd like to leave a shipping notice, please let me know by replying here and we can take a closer look together. 

[Dolo]

Thank you so much, that is exactly what I needed!

[Melanie291]

Hello,

I have just tried to do this but we don't have the option of Edit Languages is there a way I can find this? Ours looks different to on the pictures.

Thank you!

[Sam9516]

@Melz this option has changed to "Edit default theme content". After clicking it, search for "address1". Hope this helps.

 

[Sam9516]

There is a better solution to this problem, where you can ensure nobody with PO box address can complete the checkout. When they try to checkout using PO box address, then they will get the message that "we do not ship to this address".

You will need to use the BeSure Checkout Rules app. Here are the steps,

1. Create a new rule to "Hide shipping methods" under the "Shipping" section.
2.Inside the rule, Click on "Switch to condition set 2".

3. Set the condition of when "P.O. Box Address" then "Hide all shipping methods" and save the rule. 

Here is an article with detailed step by step about how to easily block PO boxes. This works even for Shopify basic plan.