A customer can't access an edition they bought
Symptom: the customer says they bought a digital edition but the viewer won't open it, or the edition isn't even listed in their account.
Work down the list. The branches diverge early.
1. Is the edition listed in their Digital Editions page?
Have the customer sign in to your store, open Digital Editions in their account menu, and tell you whether the edition is there.
- Card not listed. Entitlement was never created or has been hidden. Continue with The Digital Editions section is missing from a customer's account. Branch B covers the same cases (email mismatch, order not paid, project unpublished).
- Card listed but the viewer won't open. Keep going.
2. Confirm the project is still published
Open the project in the Masterfile dashboard. Visibility in the sidebar should read Published. If it says Draft only, the project was unpublished after the customer bought it. Their entitlement is hidden until you republish. Click Publish in the page header.
3. Check the Shopify sync state
In the same sidebar, the Shopify sync card should be green / Synced. If it's Failed, the customer's variant may be missing the editionId metafield that links it back to the edition, which means new orders aren't granting entitlements either. See A digital edition didn't sync to Shopify for the fix.
If a customer's existing entitlement is missing because of an early sync failure, click Resync in the sync card once the underlying issue is fixed. Masterfile reconciles entitlements from the order history once the variant is correctly linked.
4. Verify the order
In Shopify admin, open the order the customer used to buy the edition. Two things to check:
- Paid. Entitlements grant on payment, not at checkout. If the order is still awaiting payment (a manual or pending order), capture payment. The entitlement should appear within seconds, and Masterfile auto-fulfills the digital edition line item once the entitlement lands.
- Right variant. The line item should be a variant of the digital editions product, not a print variant or a different SKU. If they bought the wrong variant, refund and re-checkout against the correct one.
If the order is paid and against the right variant but the entitlement still isn't showing, escalate.
5. Viewer session quirks
If the entitlement is fine and the project is published but the viewer screen itself is broken:
- Viewer page is blank or stuck loading. Have the customer hard-refresh (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + R). The viewer session cookie lasts 24 hours; if it's stale, the next click from the Digital Editions card mints a new one.
- Viewer shows "Unavailable". The claim token they were redirected with expired before they reached the viewer. Have them return to the Digital Editions page and click the card again.
- Viewer opens but capsules are blank. Check the project: the edition might have been republished with an empty composition. Open the edition page to confirm it still has capsules in the composition list.
Escalate
Still stuck
If the order's paid, the project's published, sync is green, and the customer still can't open the edition
— email support@masterfile.co with the customer's email, the order number, the project title, and what they see when they click the card (or 'card not listed' if the entitlement isn't there). Include what you've already checked.