Successful workflows triggering the Error workflow

Questions
1

Describe the problem/error/question

I have an error workflow associated to most of my workflows which posts errors to Slack for monitoring.

I have noticed that I have receiving daily and consistent errors from a handful of my workflows (Typically longer running workflows that take 15-30 minutes to complete) with the error message:

This execution failed to be processed too many times and will no longer retry. To allow this execution to complete, please break down your workflow or scale up your workers or adjust your worker settings.

This odd part about this is that each time I review, the workflow which triggered the error actually shows it completed successfully and in full. All execution data is available and appears perfectly healthy. I do not understand why the error workflow is being triggered if the execution is actually completing successfully and without error.

Here is an example of the Error Trigger received by the error workflow:

{
"execution": {
    "id":  "441814",
    "url": "https://example.com/workflow/lTkzzQguBR2xYT04/executions/441814",
    "error": {
        "level":  "warning",
        "shouldReport":  false,
        "tags": {},
        "message":  "This execution failed to be processed too many times and will no longer retry. To allow this execution to complete, please break down your workflow or scale up your workers or adjust your worker settings.",
        "stack":  "Error: This execution failed to be processed too many times and will no longer retry. To allow this execution to complete, please break down your workflow or scale up your workers or adjust your worker settings.\n    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/dist/workflow-runner.js:277:29\n    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)"
    },
"mode": "trigger"
},
"workflow": {
    "id": "lTkzzQguBR2xYT04",
    "name": "My workflow"
    }
}

This is the execution data for the workflow which “Errored”

{
"id": "441814",
"finished": true,
"mode": "trigger",
"retryOf": null,
"retrySuccessId": null,
"status": "success",
"createdAt": "2025-03-14T07:00:27.015Z",
"startedAt": "2025-03-14T07:00:27.084Z",
"stoppedAt": "2025-03-14T07:33:49.086Z",
"deletedAt": null,
"workflowId": "lTkzzQguBR2xYT04",
"waitTill": null
}

This is the execution data for the triggered error workflow:

{
"id": "444657",
"finished": true,
"mode": "error",
"retryOf": null,
"retrySuccessId": null,
"status": "success",
"createdAt": "2025-03-14T07:33:32.932Z",
"startedAt": "2025-03-14T07:33:46.773Z",
"stoppedAt": "2025-03-14T07:33:48.420Z",
"deletedAt": null,
"workflowId": "E30aY2L8VcZP7pQX",
"waitTill": null
}

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version: 1.82.1
  • Database (default: SQLite): Postgres
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): GCP cloudrun
  • Operating system:
2

Open your workflow settings and see if this is disabled:

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3

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It is set in this workflow to timeout after 1 hour

4

Try turning that off and see if the errors keep showing up

5

I disabled the timeout workflow option on the 14th as suggested
The workflow I am testing with (not the only one having this issue however) is scheduled to run daily at 3am

The same error occurred on the 15th,16th,18th (not the 17th)
Each time the error workflow was triggered, the actual workflow itself continues to show that it finished successfully without error.

6

Just keeping this topic alive. Still experiecing the issue. Workflow runs and completes without error… Yet the error workflow is being triggered

7

This continues to be an issue for me.

I have concluded that all of the falsely triggered error workflows contain "shouldReport": false
in their properties, so for now i’m suppressing them from downstream error handling/actions as a workaround.

8

Keeping this topic alive as i continue to experience this issue on the latest version

9

We are also seeing this in a simple workflow like this with about 10000 iterations (500 bulk). I’ve tried to move the postgres node to a sub workflow, but the error is still there. I believe that workflow actually finishes succesfully even though this error is thrown.

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