Why does the donation process not produce a receipt either on screen or dispatched by email to donor?

Question

We have joomla 3.6.2, CiviCrm 4.7.10 and PayPal Express (PP) Donor receives an email from PP stating you sent a payment to .... Donor should also receive an emailed receipt from CiviCrm but does not Donor should also be returned from PP to an online receipt but is not, instead sees a red error page.

Where do I start looking for the answer!??

error message is CiviCRM-001 - @import url(/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/css/civicrm.css); @import url(/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/bower_components/font-awesome/css/font-awesome.min.css); Sorry but we are not able to provide this at the moment. Failed to update contribution in database

Return to home page.

function toggle( element ) { var parent = element.parentNode; var className = parent.className; if ( className == 'crm-accordion-wrapper collapsed crm-fatal-error-details-block') { parent.className = 'crm-accordion-wrapper crm-fatal-error-details-block'; } else { parent.className = 'crm-accordion-wrapper collapsed crm-fatal-error-details-block'; } }

Answer 1

'Failed to update contribution in database' tells us that your Contribution is never fully completed on the CiviCRM side of things - and hence it will not get to the part where CiviCRM sends out a receipt.

In other words - the monies are processed on the PayPal side of things - but when CiviCRM hears about it - and is trying to record that the transaction was successful - it runs into a Failed to update.