virtual/downloadable orders go to “on hold” instead of auto-completing

Howdy!

If a product is marked as both “Virtual” and “Downloadable”, it will not automatically grant access to the downloadable file unless this setting is selected:

https://cld.wthms.co/ZExhMq

It can be found under WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Downloadable Products

Since you said your order statuses are going to On Hold, I’d check to make sure your PayPal/Sandbox is setup properly, as that shouldn’t be happening (the default status should be Processing).

I hope this helps!

I do have that setting selected, so I don’t think that’s the problem.

As for the Paypal setup, the problem could definitely be there as that setup was a bit confusing…But after I manually change the order status in WooCommerce from “On Hold” to “complete”, the the PayPal payment seems to go through just fine and the file gets delivered. This is why it seems to me like the problem must be somewhere on the WooCommerce end. Any other ideas?

Thanks so much for your help with this!

Okay, definitely seems like the issue is with PayPal then (or a conflict somewhere with your theme or plugins).

Are you using this method: https://docs.woothemes.com/document/paypal-standard/ or something else?

If you are using that method, I’d suggest going to WooCommerce > Settings > Payments > PayPal Standard and making sure “Debug log” is enabled here:

https://cld.wthms.co/kGamBu

Then also make sure your Sandbox account is setup properly, as the order should end up on Completed if everything is setup properly.

Please remember that when setting up your Sandbox account here: https://developer.paypal.com/ it will give you a different email and payment information for the sandbox buyer (will have [email protected] format). You’ll need to make sure you use that buyer information along with the payment card number and expiration date it gives for that buyer profile (or the Sandbox PayPal account login details they give) in order for the payment to go through.

I just ran a test order on my site for a Virtual/Downloadable order using Sandbox mode to make sure there aren’t any bugs, and it worked fine, setting the order status to Completed upon payment.

I hope this helps!

Hi Zach,
Thanks again for your help with this. When you’re setting up Woocommerce for doing sandbox tests, do you change your main PayPal email (the one that is blurred out on this page https://cld.wthms.co/kGamBu) to the sandbox owner email address (i.e. the “[email protected]” address)?

When I tried putting that sandbox facilitator email address in there, the order does go to “completed” rather than “On hold”, so that’s encouraging — but now it doesn’t email me the link to download the product. So I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing wrong!

Thanks in advance for any advice that you have!

Hi again,

Correct.
When testing PayPal in Sandbox mode you need to use your sandbox PayPal email.

Since this works for the order status but not for the email notification anymore, can you install an email logger and test again. Here is one plugin suggestion: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-mail-logging/

**Before you do that, please do make a full backup!**

Does the email get logged and therefore created in the first place?

Hi Con, Thanks for your help. I installed the wp-mail-logging plugin on my site. When I place an sandbox order, nothing shows up on the mail logging page, so it looks like the email is not being created in the first place. Any idea what to do about that?
Thanks again!
Kelsey

Thanks for that information Kelsey!

Did you enable error logging in PayPal? If so, can you go to WooCommerce > Status > Logs and check the PayPal log to see if you can find anything that would specifically point out an issue? Because of sensitive information, please don’t post the log here.

Can you also make sure you have IPN enabled for your PayPal account (need it for both live and sandbox): https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/paypal-standard/#section-6

If you do have IPN enabled already and that isn’t working, I’d suggest switching to PDT. You should disable IPN, then try setting up PDT here: https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/paypal-standard/#section-29

Howdy!

We haven’t heard back from you in a while, so I’m going to go ahead and mark this thread as resolved. If you have any other questions please start a new thread.

Cheers!

Sorry for the slow reply, Zach’s advice with the IPN settings solved my problem and all is working well now. Thanks so much, Zach!