Troubleshooting On-Demand Email-to-Case When Cases Are Not Created in Salesforce

This article answers the question: why does an email sent to a Salesforce On-Demand Email-to-Case routing address not create a Case, and how do you troubleshoot it? Run the checks below to see whether emails reach Salesforce, then follow the resolution steps for your result.

Checks to Determine Why Emails Do Not Create Cases in Email-to-Case

1. Check that you completed the steps to set up a routing address in Email-to-Case.
2. Verify your addresses. In Email-to-Case, there are two different email addresses for each routing address:
   • Your support address. Customers use this address to reach your support team.
   • The Email Services Address. Salesforce generates this unique address for your email address.
3. Confirm that sent emails reach Salesforce servers. To do this, send an email to the long Email Services Address and verify that a case is created.
   • Compose a new email. Copy and paste the long Email Services Address into the To field. Send the email with the subject 'Test' (or similar) with a timestamp in the email body so you can identify the email.
   • Wait a few seconds and then log in to Salesforce. Go to the Cases tab and look for the new case. Make sure that the list view includes all new cases, not just the recently viewed cases or a list view that uses other filter criteria.

Resolution When a New Case Is Created

Check your email client settings to confirm that forwarding is set up properly and that all emails sent to your Email-to-Case routing address are forwarded to the Email-to-Case Email Services Address.

If the Case's related Email record's "To Address" is showing the "Email Service Address" instead of the "Email Address" set in the E2C setup, ensure the Automated Case User has profile access to appropriate Case record types. If the Automated Case User is a System User, see Assign Record Types to the Automated Process User's Profile for more details.

Resolution When No New Case Is Created

If no new Case is created, it is likely a configuration or customization issue rather than an email delivery or forwarding issue. Check with your Salesforce administrator to see if it worked previously and stopped working at some point.

Check settings for the Automated Case User as follows. These settings are available in Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions.

1. Verify if the Automated Case User has access to all record types used in the Email-to-Case configuration. To do this, log in as a Salesforce administrator.
2. Determine what record types are being used by each routing address. Click Setup | Customize | Cases | Email-to-Case in the Routing Addresses section and click each of the routing address names. Note the record type.
3. To view the User detail page, navigate to the paths below and click the username link in front of the Automated Case User.
   • In Salesforce Classic: Setup | Customize | Cases | Support Settings
   • In Lightning Experience: Gear icon | Setup | Feature Settings | Service | Support Settings
4. View that User's profile. There are different ways to view it depending on your organization's settings:
   • On the profile page for the User, scroll down to the Record Type Settings section and verify that all the record types used with Email-to-Case routing addresses are assigned to this profile for the Cases object. If not, click the Edit link in front of the Cases and add the necessary or all record types.
   • Click Save. Send another email and check to see if a case gets created.
5. Additionally, check the Automated Case User's mailbox for failure emails that show why Email-to-Case did not create a case. Failure email notifications are sent from support@salesforce.com and give a short explanation of the issue. For instance, if a value for a required field was missing on the Case page layout, the email lists the validation rule or trigger that prevented the email from creating a case. For example, see Error 'LIMIT EXCEEDED 'Email-to-Case: Errors encountered while processing' received via Email-to-Case.
6. Use the notifications in the previous step to check settings to find the problem.
   • Check Validation Rules, Workflow Rules, and Triggers. If you encounter an error message, confirm if it is related to a validation rule. If it is, deactivate the rule for a minute and try to create a case using the Email-to-Case Service Email Address.
   • Check for any required fields that could prevent the email from creating a case. An email sent to the Email-to-Case routing address only contains values for certain fields. You can see these fields under Case Settings on the Email-to-Case Routing Information page.
   • You can also run a debug log to see what workflow and triggers are being triggered during the process of creating a Case. For more, see View Debug Logs and the Setting up a Debug Log article in Setup help.
7. Check any custom Case text fields for default values that exceed the character limit for the field. For example, if the default character limit value of a Text Area field is 255 characters and the default value is more than 255 characters, a case can be created manually as the field truncates. However, when creating cases through the API, such as with Email-to-Case, the case creation fails with an error like Error ID: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (-401266195).