UPDATE – PayPal Payment Has Processed But is “On Hold” in Woocommerce
UPDATE: I had to add an extra step to the existing instructions.
Having the issue on your WordPresss site where every other payment gateway processes directly to order “Completed”, except PayPal? Me too! PayPal orders immediately convert to “On Hold” and it literally holds up the confirmation email and my digital pattern being delivered to the customer. Let’s find out, first, if your problem is the same as my problem.
After you select the order, navigate over to the right side under “Order Notes.” Here’s my error:
“Validation error: PayPal IPN response from a different email address (your email address). Order status changed from Pending payment to On hold.”
An as you can see I had to manually set the order to “Completed” even though PayPal processed their payment.
Here is what I had to do, but I’ll show you both ways to fix this depending on which method you’d prefer.
Because my primary email in PayPal is different from my primary/Admin email in WordPress, I had to change one of them so they’d match. These instructions show you where to find your primary email for both and how to change one or both of them so they are the same primary email for both accounts.
Find/Change Primary WordPress Email:
(If you’d rather change your primary PayPal email, instructions for that are below.)
Navigate to “Settings” on the left side Dashboard area of your WordPress site. You can then find or change your Primary Email under Administration Email Address.
You will have to confirm the new email for the change to complete, but that is how you change your Primary WordPress Email.
This update includes me also having to change my Primary Administration email.
Navigate to “Users” > “All Users” > “Administrator” on the left side of your Dashboard.
If you have more than one you should still have a Primary first email attached to the creation of your website.
Make sure all 3 emails match. I had to take this extra step to fix my issue.
Find/Change Primary PayPal Email:
Login into your PayPal account and select “Account Settings” under your account name in the upper right hand corner.
Then select “Account owner information” > then “Update” next to “Email”.
As you can see in the below graphic, you have a Primary Email regardless of how many emails you have listed. Just edit it from here to match your Primary Wordpess Email and future IPN errors (for that error) go away!
