Troubleshooting Emails from Files.com

When a product email does not arrive, identify the originating feature, recipient address, and expected time. Then follow the message from Files.com into the mail delivery system. A file action, an email submission, and arrival in a person's inbox are separate events.

This guidance covers product-generated emails. Business correspondence from Files.com staff can use different systems.

Start with Outbound Email Logs

Search Outbound Emails for the recipient and time window. Check the site, time zone, filters, and log retention before interpreting the absence of a record. The log distinguishes Success, Suppressed, and Failure and identifies Custom SMTP delivery when it applies.

If there is no matching entry, verify that the originating event occurred and that this feature was configured to send the expected email. Check the recipient address, account status, unsubscribe preferences, and applicable notification filters. A batched notification may not have reached its send interval yet.

A Success result establishes submission through the configured delivery path, not appearance in the final inbox. For Custom SMTP, inspect your provider's message trace next. For either delivery method, check the recipient system's quarantine, spam filtering, routing, and mailbox rules.

For Failure or Suppressed, read the logged message and any available SMTP response before resending. Repeated attempts do not correct an invalid address or a rejection policy.

Bounce Handling

Soft Bounce

A soft bounce reports a temporary delivery problem, such as a full mailbox, rate limit, or unavailable destination. Delivery may be retried by the sending mail service. With Custom SMTP, the provider's queue and retry policy govern onward delivery after it accepts the message.

Check whether the underlying problem has cleared and whether a message remains queued before repeatedly triggering new copies. Use the delivery logs to distinguish a delay from a terminal failure.

Hard Bounce

A hard bounce reports a permanent rejection, such as a nonexistent mailbox or a policy rejection treated as permanent. A recipient may then be suppressed from further delivery. Correct the address or resolve the recipient-side rejection first.

Check whether the next attempt is suppressed. If it is, contact Files.com Support for the default delivery path, or your mail provider for Custom SMTP, with the corrected address and bounce details. Do not assume resolving the mailbox problem automatically clears every suppression record.

Check the Recipient's Mail System

Ask the recipient's mail administrator to trace the message through any security gateway and final mailbox. A gateway may accept a message and then quarantine or reroute it, so an acceptance response alone does not locate it in the user's inbox.

Use Files.com Email Deliverability for sender authentication and allowlisting guidance. The default application-mail service uses Amazon SES; allowlisting the entire SES IP range is not recommended.

Message rewriting can invalidate DKIM signatures when signed content or headers change. Inspect the actual authentication results and rejection reason rather than assuming every modification causes a DMARC failure. Coordinate any filtering or rewriting exception with the recipient's mail administrator.

Check Custom SMTP Submission

Confirm the configured hostname, credentials, connection requirements, and sender policy in Custom SMTP. Authentication errors and submission rejection occur before your provider can deliver the message onward.

If the provider accepted the message, continue the investigation in its logs. Supply the recipient, timestamp, and any message identifier to the provider administrator.

Welcome Emails

Check the site's welcome-email setting and the user's authentication method. The set-password welcome flow applies to Email Signup; users authenticating through another method may have a different onboarding process.

Verify the address before using Resend welcome email, then inspect the new outbound record. A successful submission can still be delayed, filtered, or rejected later.

File Activity and Administrator Alerts

File-activity notifications depend on their folder, event and file filters, recipient eligibility, and sending interval. Disabled users do not receive them. Share Link visitor activity and upload receipts have their own notification settings; check the feature that should have generated the email.

For administrator alerts, review the relevant alert preference, not just the legacy broad Site alert emails setting. The preferences cover different outcomes, and repeated errors are batched with backoff. They are not an immediate alert for every run event. Use Event Channels when operations need selected events delivered as they occur.

Information for Support

Provide the email type, recipient address, timestamp and time zone, relevant outbound log entry, delivery method, and full bounce or SMTP response if available. Include the recipient provider's trace when it accepted the message but the user cannot find it. These details identify which stage needs investigation without sending Support passwords or mail-server credentials.