Backup not arriving via email, as set

(Just another user)

If you check the Backup Activity Log, you can see whether the backup failed or succeeded. When I set the backups to send by email, the backups were too large for my web server to attach to an email (40 MB was too large).

There may be other reasons for the failed backup. In those cases look on the Activity Log, click View Events, and copy and paste the event list into this forum. The Online Backup developer will respond.

Hi larkwest,

As Tonychung said you can check if the backup failed.

However, note that sometimes that the backup can be successful and the email successfully sent, but that the receiving end rejects it because it is too big. Services like GMail generally have a 25MB attachment limit and will refuse any email bigger. So it may have sent, but got rejected.

Best to try a different email target in this case or reduce the backup size more.

Jason

Hi Jason,

Thank you for answering! Appreciate. Perhaps you – or someone – can take this to the next level … cuz, yeah ~ the backup was successful … BUT too large for my email account to accept it.

Can you tell me the best way to handle the ACCEPTANCE of huge attachments. I can use Dropbox/link for sending, but … ?

Thank YOU!
Beautiful everything,
Lark

Hi Lark,

Unfortunately, if it is too big to be received, you can’t use the email part of the plugin. It’s an issue with your email provider.

Best thing to do is either local backups manually and download them, or go to our online vault.

Jason

I thought I joined into this thread yesterday, but it doesn’t look like it. If I messed up and am repeating myself, sorry.

I have the same problem and so it may be simply too big. But Tonychung also suggested checking Backup Activity Log. I’m such a novice I have no idea where one would go about doing that. Can you help?

And if it is too big to email, do I go into the Plugin and change the settings somehow? Then, where would the backup be stored? Hidden so I can’t find it is as useless as a backup that can’t arrive in my email!

Thanks.

Hi newbie63,

The activity log is visible by clicking “Activity log” in the plugin page in WordPress admin. Each activity is there and has events viewable by clicking “View Events” – this will show you errors, warnings, reasons for failure etc.

To reduce backup size so you CAN email it, just exclude some folders on General Settings from filesystem backup. If you have some old uploads folders you don’t particularly want to backup, you could enter “wp-content/uploads/2011” for example.

That or you can setup local backups. These are stored in “wp-content/backups” as described on the page called “Local Backups & Decryption”. You can reach this area by FTP. Or instead you could send them to our online vault, https://wordpress.backup-technology.com/. There is 100MB limit there by default but if you email us you can get it increased free of charge usually.

Regards,

Jason

Jason:

I’m afraid I’m hopelessly lost..or ignorant. I did find the Activity log, which shows successful backups once a week since July 28th. I received some of these, although at this point I’ve no idea what I did with them. That’s a whole other problem. However, unless Yahoo! changed their rules recently, I find it curious that the July backup (27.55MiB) arrived but the Oct. 13th one (29.66) did not. Do 2 MiB make that much difference?

And trying to exclude files under General Settings makes no sense to me, as I don’t know what files are being saved anyhow. That’s why I went to an automatic backup!

I’ll try setting the Plugin to Local back up…but where will it go, so I can find it and move it to another storage spot (that I’ll rememger, this time)?

Newbie 63

Jason:

Maybe I need to start a new thread here, as you didn’t answer last time.

All of my unreceived backups have been returning to my website’s email! Without the attached backup, of course. I have figured out how to switch backup from email to online vault. But…online vault will only be “incremental”. So, since as far as the program is concerned, backups have been successfully, when I switch to the vault, it won’t save the original stuff, that hasn’t been changed. How do I get it to do a full backup, so I can start fresh?

Please answer. I’m slow and ignorant, but eventually I do want to get this done!

Thanks,
Newbie 63