Why can’t a resident complete email verification for their SDL Portal account?

There are a few distinct reasons this can happen — most trace back to timing or a technical limit on the verification flow itself.

Cause	Detail
Activation link expired	The link is only valid for 10 minutes after registration. If it isn’t clicked in time, it’s dead — the resident needs to request a new one from the activation page
Registration page session expired	The sign-up form itself has an independent 5-minute session timer. If the resident fills it out too slowly, submitting triggers a “Session token expired” error before an email is ever sent
Account already verified	If the resident already activated the account previously (e.g., clicked an earlier link and forgot), the system blocks re-activation with “Account already verified” — note that requesting a new link in this case appears to succeed on screen but no email is actually sent
Signed up via Google/Microsoft with an unverified email	The portal rejects this with “Not verified by your account provider”
Email landed in spam	The activation email comes from a no-reply sender with the subject “Account Activation” — this gets caught by spam filters fairly often

There’s currently no self-service option to re-verify an email address from Account Settings — only phone/SMS re-verification is available there.

If the issue is with phone/SMS verification instead (a separate, later step used for SMS notifications):

Phone number already in use — that number is already linked to a different portal account; the error message will show a partially hidden email for the account holding it.
Invalid format — the number must be exactly 10 digits, numeric only (dashes are stripped automatically, but letters or an incorrect digit count will fail).
Too many attempts — the system allows a maximum of 10 verification code send attempts before blocking further tries.

If none of the above explains what is happening, escalate to SDL support.