The report won't generate — 'Unable to create the report. It has NOT been sent'

What the message guarantees

"Unable to create the report. It has NOT been sent — please try again." is the app stopping at the first hurdle, honestly. When you see it:

• Nothing was stored — no PDF reached us, no email was prepared.
• Nothing was replaced — any previously sent report and photo archive for this plot are untouched. The send order is deliberately PDF-first so a failure at this stage can never damage what your assessor already has.
• Nothing on your device changed — photos, sections and appendix files are all exactly as they were.

Retrying costs nothing and is the correct first response.

The checklist, in order

1. Retry once on a solid connection. Generation includes brief online steps (recipient details, the location map, uploading the finished PDF); a signal dip at the wrong moment fails the whole step. Wi-fi or good 4G/5G, then send again.
2. Update the app. Two historic causes of guaranteed generation failure are fixed in current versions: names containing / or \ (see the special characters article), and very photo-heavy plots freezing mid-generation. If your app is weeks old, update before diagnosing further.
3. Give big plots time. A plot with a very large photo count takes noticeably longer to lay out and upload; the app yields as it works so the screen stays responsive. Watch for the progress state rather than force-quitting — killing the app mid-generation is harmless to your evidence but restarts the job.
4. Check the appendix attachments. Generation merges every appendix PDF into the report, and a corrupt one can fail the merge. If you still have the original of a recently added appendix PDF (in Files, or the email it came in), remove it from the plot and send again to test, then add it back from the original. Removing it deletes Buildsnapper's copy from this phone, so if you don't have the original, leave it and contact us instead.
5. A very large project? If you are also seeing "project storage limit" messages, that project needs support's attention anyway — say so when you contact us.

If it still fails

A repeatable generation failure on a current app version is a defect — ours to fix, and we want it. Ask us through the support page, and include:

• iPhone or Android, and the app version
• The project and plot name (exact spelling — names have caused this before)
• Roughly how many photos and appendix PDFs the plot has
• Whether it ever generated successfully, and when it last did

If completion or an EPC deadline is waiting on the report, choose "Evidence at risk on site" when you contact support and we will treat it as urgent. In the meantime, do not delete photos, remove sections or rename anything to "slim the plot down" on a hunch — evidence-destroying workarounds are never the answer, and the failure is almost never about your evidence.