WooCommerce order emails customization is possibly the most wanted feature for WooCommerce store owners and developers right now. It is very difficult to edit the default templates and it’s no surprise there are many email customizer plugins out there.
We’ve already seen how to add content to specific WooCommerce emails, how to add custom email CSS, how to display product images, and more, but today I’d like to teach you a quick workaround to edit the default email text strings such as the initial greeting (‘Hi Mary,‘) or other sentences (‘We have finished processing your order.‘, ‘The following note has been added to your order:‘, ‘Just to let you know — we’ve received your order, and it is now being processed:‘, etc.).
With “edit”, of course, I mean either change the text, or completely hide it. So, let’s see how it’s done. Enjoy!
With the snippet below, I was able to hide the Customer Processing Email greeting Hi %s,, and edit the default sentence from Just to let you know — we’ve received your order, and it is now being processed: to Your payment was successful and we are now getting ready for shipping. Expect another email from us with tracking details soon!
PHP Snippet: Edit / Translate / Hide Text Strings @ WooCommerce Order Emails
Note 1: in the snippet below you find 2 examples. The first one hides the string (in fact it replaces it with an empty string). The second one, on the other hand, replaces the original string with a custom one.
Note 2: inside the str_ireplace function you must enter the original string as the first parameter, exactly as defined by WooCommerce. Sometimes WooCommerce uses weird symbols such as ‘Hi %s,‘, which are actually placeholders. The only way to make this work is to enter exactly that string: ‘Hi %s,‘. You can find these strings inside the plugin files, so I recommend you use a good code editor such as NotePad++ or Visual Studio Code so that you can quickly search through the WooCommerce plugin code.
Note 3: you can add as many $translated = str_ireplace() calls as you wish, one for each edit you want to make.
/** * @snippet Edit Strings @ WooCommerce Emails * @how-to Get CustomizeWoo.com FREE * @author Rodolfo Melogli * @compatible WooCommerce 7 * @donate $9 https://businessbloomer.com/bloomer-armada/ */ add_filter( ‘gettext’, ‘bbloomer_translate_woocommerce_strings_emails’, 9999, 3 ); function bbloomer_translate_woocommerce_strings_emails( $translated, $untranslated, $domain ) { if ( ‘woocommerce’ === $domain ) { $translated = str_ireplace( ‘Hi %s,’, ”, $untranslated ); // HIDE $translated = str_ireplace( ‘Just to let you know — we’ve received your order #%s, and it is now being processed:’, ‘Your payment was successful and we are now getting ready for shipping. Expect another email from us with tracking details soon!’, $untranslated ); // EDIT } return $translated; }
Where to add this snippet?
You can place PHP snippets at the bottom of your child theme functions.php file (delete “?>” if you have it there). CSS, on the other hand, goes in your child theme style.css file. Make sure you know what you are doing when editing such files – if you need more guidance, please take a look at my free video tutorial “Where to Place WooCommerce Customization?”
Does this snippet (still) work?
Please let me know in the comments if everything worked as expected. I would be happy to revise the snippet if you report otherwise (please provide screenshots). I have tested this code with Storefront theme, the WooCommerce version listed above and a WordPress-friendly hosting on PHP 7.3.
If you think this code saved you time & money, feel free to join 14,000+ WooCommerce Weekly subscribers for blog post updates or 250+ Business Bloomer supporters for 365 days of WooCommerce benefits. Thank you in advance 🙂
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Rodolfo Melogli
Business Bloomer Founder
Author, WooCommerce expert and WordCamp speaker, Rodolfo has worked as an independent WooCommerce freelancer since 2011. His goal is to help entrepreneurs and developers overcome their WooCommerce nightmares. Rodolfo loves travelling, chasing tennis & soccer balls and, of course, wood fired oven pizza.
