[Plugin: Contact Form 7] [_post_author_email] not working

I am trying to use [_post_author_email] in author.php so that my users can contact authors via email contact form. I have seen post on here where people have gotten it to work but i can’t figure it out. I checked in special-mail-tags.php and the filters there seem to rely on $post->post_author ect whereas the codex for author.php is $curauth->user_email; ect. I can’t figure out how the other person got it to work. Also the error I am getting has a red border

Caveat: It works when I Manually enter a email in the To: block.

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/