When something goes wrong

The mailbox is built so that no submission fails silently: every email you send gets an answer — a confirmation, a file to tap, or a message explaining what went wrong. So the symptoms below are the complete list of things you might see.

Your email bounces straight back

The bounce says the sender is not authorized. Only the two approved email addresses may use the mailbox, and the match is exact — sending from a work address, an alias, or a second account you sometimes use will bounce even though it’s you.

What you do

1. Check which address the bounced email was sent from.
2. Resend the recipe from your usual, approved address.
3. If you need another address added to the approved list, ask whoever maintains the pipeline — each rejection also alerts them automatically, so they may already know.

You get a “Recipe submission failed” email

The email tells you what went wrong in plain words — for example that no recipe could be found in what you sent. The fixes that usually work:

What you do

1. Read the reason in the email.
2. For a photo: retake it so the text is sharp and the whole recipe is in frame, then send again.
3. For a link: check it opens the actual recipe page in your browser (not a search page or an app-only link), then send again.
4. For pasted text: make sure the full ingredients and steps made it into the email body, then send again.

Forwarding the same email again is safe — it simply retries. (And if the identical message is ever delivered twice by accident, the duplicate is recognised and ignored, so you won’t get double recipes.)

The photo was “too large”

Very large photos can’t be processed, and the failure email says so.

What you do

1. Send a smaller version: a screenshot of the photo, or the photo resent at a reduced size if your mail app offers that when sending.

The reply says “imported” but the recipe isn’t in Paprika

Imported recipes arrive via Paprika’s cloud sync, which can lag a little.

What you do

1. Open Paprika on your phone and pull down to refresh, forcing a sync.
2. Give it a minute and refresh again.
3. Still missing? The reply email contains the recipe’s web page link, so the recipe itself is safe — pass the reply on to whoever maintains the pipeline so they can check the import route.

No reply arrives at all

Replies normally come within a couple of minutes. Temporary hiccups are retried automatically for a few minutes before anything is declared failed, so first just wait a little longer.

What you do

1. Wait five minutes or so, and check your spam folder for the reply.
2. Send the recipe again — retrying is always safe.
3. If replies still don’t come, tell whoever maintains the pipeline; they can see every submission and its status in the system’s log.

A recipe page link doesn’t open

A recipe’s web page exists only once the recipe has been processed successfully — a link from an old email whose submission failed will show “Not found”. The link in a confirmation email should always work; if one doesn’t, report it to whoever maintains the pipeline along with the link.