Photo Booth Fix: Email sharing not arriving

What guests and the attendant see

Guests open their inbox and find nothing, or find the message hours later. At corporate events, a cluster of people with the same work domain all report nothing at all.

The attendant sees the share marked sent, queued or failed in the app's share history. A sent email that never shows up usually landed in a filter. A failed one usually has a malformed address. Queued means your connection is the problem, not email.

60-second triage

1. Pull up the session and read the address back, including the part after the @. "gmial.com" and "gmail.con" are easy to miss on a touch keyboard.
2. Ask the guest to search their inbox, spam and promotions or other tabs for your event name.
3. Offer the QR on the screen so they can grab the file on their phone right now.
4. If it was a typo, resend once to the corrected address.

Likely causes, ranked

1. Spam or promotions folder. A message from an unfamiliar sender with a link and images often gets sorted away from the main inbox.
2. Typo in the address. Domain misspellings, a missing letter, or a period in the wrong place.
3. Queue not sending. No connection, so nothing has left the device yet.
4. Corporate mail filtering. Company email systems can hold or quarantine outside messages with links or large attachments, sometimes for hours, sometimes for good.
5. Large attachments. If your app attaches full video files instead of a link, some mailboxes reject them.
6. Sender setup. If you set a custom from-address on your own domain in the booth app and that domain is not authenticated for sending (SPF and DKIM records), messages are more likely to be filtered.

The full fix, step by step

1. Send a test to yourself at a personal webmail address. If it does not arrive within a couple of minutes, check the queue and connection first.
2. Fix and resend any address that was mistyped. One resend is enough.
3. At corporate events, suggest a personal address if work email is not arriving, and tell the host that their IT team may be holding the messages.
4. Check how your app sends video. If there is a choice, send a link to the share page rather than an attachment.
5. Check your sender settings during a lull. If you use a custom from-address, confirm in your app's help docs which DNS records it needs and whether they are set. If unsure, switch back to the app's default sender for the rest of the event.
6. Make the message easy to find: the event name in the subject line, your business name as the sender name.
7. Log the addresses that bounced so the host can share the gallery link with those guests after the event.

Prevent it next event

• At T-7, write the email subject and text with the event name up front, so guests can search for it.
• At T-2, send test emails to at least two big webmail providers and one work address, then check where each one landed.
• At setup, include email in your four-method test alongside QR, SMS and AirDrop.
• For corporate clients, ask during planning whether guests will use work addresses and whether IT can allow your sender. Add it to your client planning questionnaire.
• Tell guests what to look for: "It comes from us with the event name in the subject. Check promotions if you don't see it."

When to switch to another sharing method

If your own test email has not arrived within 2 minutes, stop pushing email for now. Lead with the QR code, offer text and AirDrop, and point people to the gallery QR sign.

For a corporate event where work addresses are being held, do not keep resending; each resend is another message for the filter to hold. Switch those guests to QR or a personal address, and make sure the host gets the gallery link within 48 hours to share internally. Record the issue in your post-event report.