SOLUTION to No shipping methods were found etc

From a days googling I finally found a solution to the message that says “No shipping methods were found; please recalculate your shipping or continue to checkout and enter your full address to see if there is shipping available to your location”

I saw many posts all over the internet complaining about this message, because it turns customers away or they contact the shop and complain the checkout is broken.

THE REASON THIS MESSAGE SHOWS IS BECAUSE THERE’S NO POSTCODE/ZIP and so the shipping calculator can’t work.

To recreate this problem, login to WordPress>User and remove the postcode from your user info, then refresh the shop, add an item to cart then click VIEW CART. You should see the message, “No shipping methods were found; please recalculate your shipping…..”.

THE SOLUTION.
The message is stored as HTML in the file cart-shipping.php (line 17 for me)
the path is plugins>woocommerce>templates>cart>cart-shipping.php

Because my theme has a Woocommece folder for over-rides, I found it at – wp-content>themes>name of your theme>woocommerce>cart>cart-shipping.php

I changed the message to – “Please click CALCULATE SHIPPING over on the left and enter your postcode to calculate shipping charges or REGISTER/LOGIN at the top of the page” and I changed the font size and color of CALCULATE SHIPPING to mirror the actual CALCULATE SHIPPING link.
All a guest or not logged-in customer has to do is click the CALCULATE SHIPPING link and enter their postcode or Zip and the Cart Totals box shows the shipping options.
Hope this helps others.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/