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Updated Jul 2026

Fix a post that didn’t publish

When PostSignoff tries to publish an approved post and the social platform refuses it, the post’s status changes to Failed. This page covers where to find failed posts, the most common reasons they fail, and how to fix and retry them.

Where you see a failure

  • Content page: a failed platform version shows a red failure badge under the post’s content, with a short reason (for example, Instagram not connected) and a Check connections link next to it. Point at the badge to see the full error message.
  • History page: set the Status filter to Failed to list every failed post. The row also shows the error message under the content preview.
  • Post outcome drawer: select a failed row on the History page to open the drawer, then look at the Failure section. It shows the full error message and a Retry button.

Steps to retry a failed post

  1. Fix the underlying problem first (see the causes below). Retrying without fixing it usually fails again the same way.
  2. Retry it from wherever you found it:
    • Content page: select the ↻ icon in the row’s action group (next to Approve and Reject). It’s only enabled when the post has a failed platform version.
    • History page: select Retry directly in the row.
    • Post outcome drawer: select Retry in the Failure section.
  3. You see a Retrying failed posts (Content page) or Publishing now (History page) confirmation, and the post attempts to publish again immediately.

The Content page’s ↻ retry and the History page’s (or drawer’s) Retry button don’t take exactly the same path, but both end up publishing again: the Content page’s ↻ retries only the platform versions of that post that are currently Failed. History’s and the drawer’s Retry act on the single failed post you selected.

Common causes and fixes

Your connection expired or was revoked

{platform} rejected the access token (HTTP 401) — reconnect the account

{platform} in this message is the lowercase platform name (for example, “twitter”, not “Twitter”). The social platform stopped honoring PostSignoff’s access to your account, usually because the connection expired, you changed your password on the platform, or you revoked access there. Reconnect the account, then retry the post. See Connect your social accounts.

Facebook and Instagram (both Meta platforms) don’t use HTTP 401 for this. A revoked Meta connection shows HTTP 400 or HTTP unknown in place of 401, for example: facebook rejected the access token (HTTP 400) — reconnect the account. Treat it the same way: reconnect the account.

No account connected for that platform

No connected {platform} account for this brand

{platform} here is also lowercase (for example, “instagram”). The Content-page failure badge shortens this to a label like Instagram not connected.

The post was approved for a platform your brand has no connected account for. Connect the account, then retry. See Connect your social accounts.

Instagram post has no image or video

Instagram requires an image or video to publish

Instagram never accepts a text-only post. If you approved a post for Instagram without adding media, it fails at publish time even though nothing stopped you from approving it. Open the post, add an image or video to the Instagram platform version, then retry.

TikTok post has no video or images

TikTok requires a video or images to publish

Same idea as Instagram: TikTok never accepts a text-only post. Add media to the TikTok platform version, then retry.

TikTok rejected a PNG image

TikTok accepts JPEG and WEBP images for photo posts. PNG images may be rejected. If a TikTok post with a PNG image fails, replace it with a JPEG or WEBP image and retry.

TikTok caption looks cut off

TikTok captions longer than its limit are silently shortened to fit when the post publishes. You won’t see a warning first. Check the caption on TikTok after it publishes, and keep captions within the limit if you want to avoid this. See Platform limits and requirements.

Facebook or LinkedIn permission problem

Facebook requires PostSignoff’s connected account to still be an admin of the Facebook Page it publishes to. LinkedIn requires it to still be an admin of the organization. If admin access was removed after you connected the account, publishing fails. Reconnect the account (choosing the Page or organization again), or ask an admin to restore your access, then retry.

There’s no dedicated permission-denied message for this. It surfaces as the same generic transport error described below (Facebook API error ({status}) or LinkedIn API error ({status})), so you can’t tell from the message alone whether the cause is a permission problem or something else.

Reddit posts go to your own profile

Reddit posts always publish to your own Reddit profile. There’s no option to choose a subreddit. If you expected a post to go to a specific subreddit, that’s not something PostSignoff currently supports. It isn’t a failure to fix. That’s how Reddit publishing works today.

Rate limits

If a platform temporarily rate-limits PostSignoff, the post doesn’t immediately show as failed. See the auto-retry section below.

Other publish errors

Anything that isn’t a 401, a missing-account error, or one of the platform-specific causes above shows up as a generic transport error naming the platform and an HTTP status:

  • Facebook API error ({status})
  • LinkedIn API error ({status})
  • Twitter API error ({status})
  • Reddit API error ({status})
  • TikTok API error ({status})
  • Instagram publish failed ({status})
  • Instagram container creation failed ({status})

These are generic. The status code is your best clue to the cause. See Common error messages if you need help interpreting a specific status.

Auto-retry vs. manual retry

Whether a failed attempt is retried automatically depends on how the post was published:

  • Scheduled posts: if a scheduled post hits a temporary problem (a platform rate limit, or the platform being briefly unavailable), it stays Approved and PostSignoff automatically retries it on its regular publishing cycle for up to about 2 hours after the scheduled time. If it still hasn’t succeeded after that window, it changes to Failed and needs a manual retry.
  • Post Now: if you publish with Post Now and it hits the same kind of temporary problem, it doesn’t auto-retry. It changes to Failed immediately, and you retry it yourself. This includes any post published without a schedule. With no scheduled time to anchor a retry cycle to, there’s nothing to defer the attempt against, so a temporary problem always falls straight through to Failed.
  • Any failure caused by an expired connection, missing media, or a platform permission problem is never auto-retried. These need you to fix the underlying problem first.

Approved posts moved back to Pending

If you disconnect or remove a social account, any of its posts that were already Approved are automatically moved back to Pending rather than being left to fail. You’ll see a note on the post like:

Moved to Pending — {Platform} was disconnected (Jul 16, 2026). Re-approve it once the account is reconnected.

Reconnect the account, then re-approve the post from the Content page. See Review and approve your posts.

If something goes wrong

“Publishing is turned off in this environment — approved posts stay in the queue for manual posting.” Publishing to real platforms is disabled for this environment. Retrying reuses the same publish step as Post Now, so this message can appear from a Retry action too. Retrying won’t work until an administrator turns it back on. If you instead see a longer version of this message mentioning PUBLISH_EXTERNAL_ENABLED, it means the same thing. That wording comes from the server rather than the toast shown on the Content page.