Thanks pgr,
I’m going around in circles here.
Having struggled with a number of issues, i finally migrated to 8.2, but still had problems with subpanels. I decided to roll back and ensure i had a fully functioning 7.12.5 before migrating, hoping i could finally make the switch 
As cicciobello pointed out in this post , there isn’t a supported upgrade path from 7.13 to 8.2. So how are people making the move?
Would the email requirements be fixed in 8.2 if i had 7.12.5 in the legacy folder?