Now I understand.
EBD always sends at least 1 email, which I call the “notification email”. That email is supposed to go to the wordpress admin (you) to let him know that someone has visited the website and has downloaded the download file by filling in the EBD form & hitting submit. That email does not go to the website visitor — it’s just for you, so that you know something happened. Note that that email does NOT have a link to the download file. Instead, it just has the name of the download file that was downloaded (or multiple files if your form allows that) and is just to let you know something happene. That email is configured by way of the email settings in the Contact Form 7 form you created. In your case, you set the From: and the To: of that email to be your gmail address. You should change the From: of that email to something else, which will keep it from appearing in the Sent folder of your gmail account (normally it is set to something like [email protected] where yourdomain.com is whatever your domain name is).
If you selected ’email’ or ‘both’ (rather than ‘inline’) in the EBD Settings, then EBD will send a second email. That email goes to the email address that the website visitor typed into the form on your webpage when he visited your website (which is normally the visitor’s email address & could be anything really). That email DOES normally contain a link to the download file. You don’t see this email because it goes to whatever email address the visitor typed in. Note that there is no way to control the From: of this email in the normal EBD Settings, which is usually a problem because the From: will get set to something goofy. You need to use the Postman SMTP plugin or the Custom Sender For Email Before Download plugin in order to set the From: value of this email. And, you should do that, because many email providers (Yahoo mail, etc) will silently throw the email away if the From: is not a valid email address for your domain name. So, aside from installing one of those plugins, you also may need to create an email address in your web hosts menus.
So to recap, you need to:
1. Edit your CF7 form and change the From: to [email protected]
2. Install one of those two plugins (unless you are already using a different SMTP plugin)
3. If needed, create an email account in your web hosting provider’s cpanel or whatever menu system they have, so that you have a [email protected] email address to use.
4. Use your SMTP plugin or that Custom Sender plugin to set the From: value to the email address you just created.
5. Go make a new email address on Yahoo Mail or some other mail provider. You’ll use this email to test with. Once you make it, then use your browser & visit your webpage with the EBD form in it. Put your new Yahoo email address into the form & hit submit. Now, you should get two emails — one email will be the notification email and it will go to your gmail account (and it will have a From: of [email protected] so it will only appear in your Inbox and not in your Sent). The other email will go to the Yahoo email address & it will have a link to download the download file. If you get both emails then you are in good shape.