paypal taking me to wrong page in cart after payment

after paying inpaypal the page brings me back to Payment Method - Step 2 and asks me to confirm payment. when u do this. it goes to another page 'confirmation page' (step 3) and when i click 'confirm the order' success page and everything is fine. downloadable product is availabe.

im using pay pal express module

anyone any ideas?

That is normal -- that's how the express checkout module works.

if i use ipn PP, it takes me direct from paypal to checkout success, which is what i want. prob is zencart doesnt recongise its a new order and givesme the same order number as the previuos one. this doesnt happen with express checkout. obviousy there is something wrong with ipn. its not updating the cart.

i have checked my settings with PP and triple checked everything against the list of how to install PP. ive checked with my host about the correct open ports. and they are open.

i really want this to work cos zen cart is really amazin and this is the last piece of the puzzle after working on it for nearly a month.

Express Checkout first takes the customer to PayPal's site to select their payment method. Then they come back to your store to confirm the actual payment amount.
If you have coupons or gift certificates enabled, it will allow them to enter those on the Payment page. If those are disabled, it will skip the payment page.

IPN works similarly, but in a different order ... the customer goes to the payment-method-selection first, then the confirmation of final total, then to PayPal. same steps; different order.

IPN requires that PayPal can communicate with your server correctly. If you have followed all the troubleshooting steps in the article I pointed you to, then you would have some debug logs to share explaining what it is and isn't doing -- please post them in the relevant discussion.