> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.pipelime.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Fix an email account in Error

> Every Error message the product can show, what caused it, and what Reconnect actually does.

export const Screenshot = ({id, alt, caption, frame = 'browser', url, marks = [], lang = 'en', workspace = 'northwind-outbound'}) => {
  const src = `/images/screenshots/${lang}/${id}.png`;
  const chrome = url ? `app.pipelime.ai/${workspace}${url}` : 'app.pipelime.ai';
  return <figure className={`pl-shot pl-shot--${frame} not-prose`}>
      <div className="pl-shot__frame">
        {frame !== 'bare' && <div className="pl-shot__bar">
            <span className="pl-shot__dots">
              <span className="pl-shot__dot" />
              <span className="pl-shot__dot" />
              <span className="pl-shot__dot" />
            </span>
            <span className="pl-shot__url">{chrome}</span>
          </div>}
        <div className="pl-shot__media">
          <img src={src} alt={alt} loading="lazy" />
          {marks.map(mark => <span key={mark.n} className="pl-shot__mark" style={{
    left: `${mark.x}%`,
    top: `${mark.y}%`
  }} aria-hidden="true">
              {mark.n}
            </span>)}
        </div>
      </div>
      {caption && <figcaption className="pl-shot__caption">{caption}</figcaption>}
    </figure>;
};

An email account marked **Error** is not sending. The sentence stored beside the chip
is what tells you why.

<div className="pl-availability">
  <div className="pl-availability__row">
    <div className="pl-availability__label">Where</div>
    <div className="pl-availability__value"><span className="pl-path">Integrations<span className="pl-path__sep">→</span>Integrations<span className="pl-path__sep">→</span>Email Accounts</span></div>
  </div>

  <div className="pl-availability__row">
    <div className="pl-availability__label">Your role needs</div>
    <div className="pl-availability__value">Read access to Email Accounts <code>read-senders</code>. Admin, Member and Viewer have it by default.</div>
  </div>

  <div className="pl-availability__row">
    <div className="pl-availability__label">To create or change</div>
    <div className="pl-availability__value"><code>create-senders</code> to add one, <code>update-senders</code> to change one, on top of the permission above.</div>
  </div>

  <div className="pl-availability__note">If you cannot find this in your sidebar, your workspace may have a custom menu configuration. Contact support and we will check it for you.</div>
</div>

## Where the message is, and what it is

**Error** is one status with many possible causes. The chip tells you almost nothing;
the sentence tells you everything. You can read that sentence in two places: on the
**Email Accounts** list it is the tooltip on the Error chip (1), and on the account's
own page it fills a red banner.

The only status control the row offers on an errored account is the icon whose
tooltip reads **Refresh sender** (2). No pause, no resume: pausing or resuming an
account in Error is refused anyway.

<Screenshot id="email-accounts/reconnect-a-sender--row-action" url="/senders" alt="The Email Accounts table with one row showing a red Error chip and a refresh icon button, among rows showing Active and No Campaigns" caption="The refresh icon on an errored row runs the same reconnect as the button on the account's own page." marks={[{ n: 1, x: 79, y: 38 }, { n: 2, x: 84, y: 38 }]} />

Read the sentence, not the heading. The banner's heading always reads "Connection
Error:", whatever is written underneath, including a message about sending
reputation, which has nothing to do with connecting.

Read it fresh, too. The stored sentence is whatever was written most recently, not
what went wrong first, and it can change while you are not looking:

* A mailbox on PipeLime managed infrastructure is re-tested by a scheduled job. When
  the test still fails, the job replaces the sentence with the failure it just saw.
* An account whose own address keeps bouncing warm-up mail has its sentence
  overwritten by that bounce, whatever it said before.

## How fast an account turns red

It depends on which mechanism caught the problem, and they do not agree.

* *The scheduled connection check waits.* A rejected sign-in has to keep being
  rejected before the status changes, and an unreachable server for considerably
  longer. A failure hitting most of the accounts on one of our machines at once is
  suppressed rather than passed on, so a bad hour does not burn a batch of accounts.
* *A failed send does not wait.* When the mail server answers with a definitive
  configuration or authentication error, that single send flips the account
  immediately: no grace period and no second attempt.
* *The reputation counter needs a streak.* Several permanent rejections, spread
  across several different recipient domains, inside one window.

## Reconnect it

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the account">
    On the **Email Accounts** page, open the account carrying the Error chip. You can
    also press the refresh icon on the row itself: it runs the same reconnect and
    reports the result in a notification, without opening anything.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Read the message before you press anything">
    A red banner sits at the top of the account's page with the full sentence in it
    (1), and the **Reconnect** button on the right (2).

    <Screenshot id="email-accounts/reconnect-a-sender--error-banner" frame="bare" alt="A red banner reading 'Connection Error:' followed by a message about recipient mail servers rejecting emails, with a Reconnect button on the right" caption="Here the heading says connection and the message says reputation. The message is the accurate one." marks={[{ n: 1, x: 30, y: 34 }, { n: 2, x: 85, y: 45 }]} />
  </Step>

  <Step title="Press Reconnect">
    We re-test the credentials we hold: for sending and for receiving separately,
    because an account that can send but not receive would never see a reply. A
    mailbox you connected by signing in has its access re-checked instead. If the
    account has a custom tracking domain, its DNS record is re-checked as well, and a
    failing record keeps the account in Error even when the mailbox itself
    answered.

    Only when all of that passes is the account registered for sending again and set
    back to **Active**.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Warning>
  Reconnect only tests what it has. The mailbox check runs only when the account
  holds a complete set of connection details: host, port, security, username and
  password for sending, plus host, port and security for receiving. If any one of
  them is blank, nothing is tested: the account is set to **Active** and reported as
  verified. An account that reports success on Reconnect and still sends nothing is
  the symptom; open it and fill in what is missing.
</Warning>

<Check>
  The banner disappears and a notification reads "Connection verified successfully".
  On the list the red chip is gone: replaced by **Active**, or by **No Schedule** or
  **No Campaigns**, which the list shows in place of **Active** when the account has
  no sending hours or is not attached to a campaign. All three mean the account is
  Active again.
</Check>

<Screenshot id="email-accounts/reconnect-a-sender--success" frame="bare" alt="A green notification reading 'Connection verified successfully'" caption="A representative example: this confirmation needs a mailbox that starts answering again, so the screen is captured against a simulated response." />

If it did not work, the notification carries the new message instead and the account
stays in Error with the sentence updated. That is deliberate: a reconnect that
verified nothing never reports success.

## What each message is telling you

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="The mailbox refused the sign-in">
    "Mailbox authentication failed — the account may have been deleted or its
    credentials revoked. Please reconnect." is the scheduled check's wording, and a
    failed send writes it too when the mail server says the account cannot be
    authenticated. "Authentication failed. Please check SMTP credentials." is the
    other form a failed send writes. All of them mean the provider rejected the login
    we hold.

    Reconnecting with the same stored password cannot fix a password that changed.
    Enter the new one on the account's page and save. Saving connection details
    re-tests them and recomputes the status the same way Reconnect does. That second
    route is not available on a managed mailbox: its connection fields are owned by
    the infrastructure and are ignored if you send them.

    If the mailbox itself was deleted at the provider, there is nothing to recover:
    remove the account here, or connect a different mailbox.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Invalid SMTP credentials, invalid IMAP credentials, or both">
    "Invalid SMTP credentials", "Invalid IMAP credentials" and "Invalid IMAP and SMTP
    credentials" are written by the credential test itself: by Reconnect, by saving
    connection details, by a row in a bulk import, and by the scheduled job that
    re-tests managed mailboxes. Each has the mail server's own reply appended, which
    is usually the more specific half of the message.

    Sending and receiving are tested separately, so an account can hold a perfect
    sending password and still land here because its receiving details are wrong.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The server could not be reached">
    "Could not establish a connection to the mailbox server. Please check the account
    settings and reconnect." is the general form. A failed send writes a narrower one
    depending on where it broke: "Connection failed. Please check SMTP host and
    port.", "Connection failed. Please check SMTP host and network.", "TLS/SSL
    connection failed. Please check SMTP security settings.", "DNS lookup failed.
    Please check SMTP host." or "Protocol error. Please check SMTP port and security
    settings."

    These point at the server details rather than the password. Check the host, the
    port and the security setting against what your provider publishes, correct them
    on the account's page, and save.

    Only the general sentence is written after a retry. When the sending service
    reports that it cannot reach the mailbox (or is not connected to it), the account
    is registered again and the send retried once, and the message is written on the
    second failure. The five narrower sentences have no retry behind them: they are
    written by the first send that fails.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Access was withdrawn (a mailbox connected by signing in)">
    "OAuth authorization is no longer valid — the account may have been deleted or
    access revoked. Please reconnect." comes from the scheduled check. "OAuth
    verification failed: …" comes from the sign-in being tested directly (when you
    first connect the mailbox, and again on every Reconnect), with the provider's own
    refusal appended.

    Reconnect re-checks the access we were granted. If it still works the account
    recovers; if it was withdrawn (the password changed, the account was removed, or
    access was revoked in the provider's security settings), the mailbox has to be
    connected again from scratch.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The account could not be registered for sending">
    "Failed to re-register account on the email service: …", "Credentials verified but
    re-registration on the email service failed: …" and "Failed to register with Email
    API: …" all mean the same thing: the credentials verified, but the account could
    not be handed to the sending service afterwards. A managed mailbox reports any
    failure in that same step as "Could not connect the mailbox to the sending
    service." That carries no detail, because the detail goes to our logs.

    The account is deliberately left in Error rather than shown as Active, because an
    account that looks healthy and sends nothing is worse than one that admits the
    problem. Try again in a few minutes; if the message persists, send it to
    [support@pipelime.ai](mailto:support@pipelime.ai).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="A custom tracking domain stopped resolving">
    Reconnect re-checks the tracking domain too, if the account has one, and a failing
    check keeps the account in Error even when the mailbox verified. The
    message is the DNS check's own, so it names the record rather than the mailbox:
    "No CNAME records found", "CNAME record must point to …", "Invalid domain format"
    or "DNS lookup failed: …".

    Fix the record with whoever hosts your DNS, then reconnect again.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Warm-up mail to this mailbox keeps bouncing">
    "Email address is invalid or no longer exists. Warmup email to this address
    bounced too many times." is about the account's own address, not a lead's: the
    warm-up network could not deliver to it. This one overwrites whatever message the
    account was already carrying.

    Reconnect will clear it if the mailbox now accepts mail, because the credential
    test is what decides the status. If the address really is gone, connect a
    different mailbox.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Error, with no sentence at all">
    A managed mailbox that the infrastructure reports as failed is set to Error
    without a message. The banner then reads "Connection Error:" and stops, and the
    chip's tooltip falls back to the generic "Connection error".

    There is nothing for you to correct here. The mailbox never finished being built.
    Send the account's address to [support@pipelime.ai](mailto:support@pipelime.ai).
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## The one Error reconnecting will not fix

<Warning>
  "Recipient mail servers are rejecting emails from this sender — likely a sending
  reputation issue with its domain or IP address. Please review the sender and
  reconnect it once resolved."

  Reconnecting an account in this state succeeds. The credentials are fine, which is
  exactly the point, and the next rejection puts it straight back into Error. Resolve
  the reputation problem first, then reconnect.
</Warning>

This Error is written by a counter, not by a connection test. It needs a run of
permanent rejections spread across several different recipient domains before it
fires, so one strict receiving server cannot burn an account on its own. What it
reports is that the receiving side is refusing your domain or your sending address,
which is a deliverability problem to fix at the source.

It is also the one Error the automatic recovery below deliberately steps over, for
the same reason: an account whose credentials verify would be reactivated on the spot
and blocked again on its next send.

## The Errors that clear themselves

A mailbox on PipeLime managed infrastructure does not always need you. A scheduled job
keeps re-testing managed accounts that are sitting in Error and, when the mailbox
answers, registers it for sending again, clears the message and sets it back to
**Active**, with nobody pressing anything. The same job picks up managed mailboxes
whose setup never finished. It leaves the sending-reputation Error above alone, on
purpose.

So a managed mailbox can go red and green again without you, and its message can
change in between. If one has just turned red, wait a few minutes before you do
anything.

An account you connected yourself (your own mailbox, or one you connected by signing
in) is not covered by any of that. Nothing puts it back on a schedule: recovery is
Reconnect, or saving corrected connection details.

## Things that look like this but are not

* *A deferred sign-in.* When a provider defers a login because it is busy, the account
  is left alone and only that one message is parked; it is sent again automatically
  once the deferral clears. Nothing turns red.
* *A paused account.* **Paused** means one of two things and the tooltip is the same
  for both. Either somebody paused it, and the row offers **Resume sender**; or the
  product parked it, because a managed mailbox is held at **Paused** until its setup
  finishes and it can actually send. The reason for a system-parked account is stored
  but never shown on any screen, so the two are indistinguishable in the interface. A
  managed mailbox you have just ordered showing **Paused** is not waiting for you.
  The same scheduled job puts it into service once the mailbox is ready.
* *An account that is quiet.* An account can be **Active** and still send nothing
  right now: outside its sending hours, or resting for the day. That is a different
  question; see the statuses page below.

## Troubleshooting

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="There is no Reconnect button">
    Reconnecting counts as changing an email account, so a role that can only read them
    sees the Error and the message but no control at all. It is hidden, not greyed
    out. Ask a workspace administrator to reconnect it, or to widen your role.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Reconnect and Check Connection are not the same button">
    Check Connection, at the top of the account's page, tests the values currently in
    the form, useful right after you have corrected a host or a password, before
    saving. It never changes the stored status.

    Reconnect re-tests what is saved, and does change the status. After editing
    anything, save first.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="It went back to Error minutes later">
    A reconnect proves the mailbox answered at that moment; it cannot promise the next
    send will work. The usual cause of a quick relapse is the reputation block above:
    reconnecting it does succeed, and the next rejection returns it to Error. Read the
    message again: if it changed, so did the cause.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Related

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Sender statuses" icon="activity" href="/en/email-accounts/sender-statuses">
    Active, Paused and Error, and the chips that are not statuses at all.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Automatic health checks" icon="heart-pulse" href="/en/email-accounts/sender-health-checks">
    What the scheduled check looks at, and what it will and will not change.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Error messages glossary" icon="list" href="/en/troubleshooting/error-messages-glossary">
    Every message the product can show you, in one place.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Connect another mailbox" icon="mail" href="/en/email-accounts/connect-other-smtp">
    The server details a mailbox needs, if yours turn out to be wrong.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>
