diff --git a/.changeset/sys-email-error-description-widen.md b/.changeset/sys-email-error-description-widen.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..e27ce70c96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.changeset/sys-email-error-description-widen.md
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+"@objectstack/platform-objects": patch
+---
+
+fix(platform-objects): `sys_email.error` field help now covers pre-delivery rejections, not only transport failures
+
+`sys_email.error` was declared as *"Transport error message when status=failed"*.
+Since `EmailService.recordRejectedMessage` landed, the same column also carries
+the reason a message was rejected by `normalizeMessage` **before** it reached a
+transport (an unsendable `from`, no recipient, no subject, no body) — those rows
+are written with `status: 'failed'` too, prefixed `rejected before delivery: `.
+
+Nothing was misleading in the *data*: the row prefixes its own reason, so an
+operator reading a failed row is never sent chasing an SMTP host for a message
+that never reached one. What was stale was the field's declared `description`,
+which Studio surfaces as the field's help text — it named only the transport
+case, narrower than what the column has held since that change landed.
+
+The description now reads: *"Why the message failed — a transport error, or the
+validation that rejected it before delivery."* It stays true under both row
+shapes and deliberately does not name the row's own `rejected before delivery:`
+prefix, so it will not go stale again if that prefix's wording changes.
diff --git a/packages/platform-objects/src/apps/translations/en.objects.generated.ts b/packages/platform-objects/src/apps/translations/en.objects.generated.ts
index ed722edf31..61f17e21e7 100644
--- a/packages/platform-objects/src/apps/translations/en.objects.generated.ts
+++ b/packages/platform-objects/src/apps/translations/en.objects.generated.ts
@@ -2476,7 +2476,7 @@ export const enObjects: NonNullable<TranslationData['objects']> = {
       },
       error: {
         label: "Error",
-        help: "Transport error message when status=failed"
+        help: "Why the message failed — a transport error, or the validation that rejected it before delivery."
       },
       attempt_count: {
         label: "Attempts",
diff --git a/packages/platform-objects/src/audit/sys-email.object.ts b/packages/platform-objects/src/audit/sys-email.object.ts
index 073cee51bf..c154aba052 100644
--- a/packages/platform-objects/src/audit/sys-email.object.ts
+++ b/packages/platform-objects/src/audit/sys-email.object.ts
@@ -192,7 +192,8 @@ export const SysEmail = ObjectSchema.create({
     error: Field.textarea({
       label: 'Error',
       required: false,
-      description: 'Transport error message when status=failed',
+      description:
+        'Why the message failed — a transport error, or the validation that rejected it before delivery.',
       group: 'State',
     }),