Q: Problems with mail in iOS 9

I may have the fIx.  This was with the help of a Cox technician.  I deleted the pop account I had, and re-created the account. In the process I discovered that Apple iOS 9 no longer offers the option of a pop account; only an IMAP account. The IMAP account will not function in the way that I would like. So the Cox technician showed me a trick that he used for Yosemite but was not sure wold work for the iPad.  But it did. The trick is when you create a new (IMAP) account give it an incorrect gibberish username and password. Then it tells you that that information is not correct and when you are given the chance to fix it you now have the option of selecting a pop account. So far today, it's working.   And as a matter of fact I got back the emails that got deleted when I deleted the account. Or at least most of them. I'm a little concerned about posting this on this community, because if Apple eliminated the pop account option they may plug this hole if they know it's there.  Good luck to all!

Happy to help, but you need to submit the issue to the apple feedback page if we want something done.  Here is my entry that exactly fits the restricted word count, feel free to plagiarise.  The more people that raise the issue the quicker it gets addressed.

I have identified 5 separate threads on the apple forum that relate, I will attempt to précis them. Issue only affects pop/smtp email accounts. Only affecting  iOS 9/9.01 and possibly the 9.1 beta. Email content is removed from the iOS device resulting in a sudden decrease in the storage required for the mail app. Emails that have been present on the device for many months and accessed multiple times in both the inbox and sent items will be randomly altered with the basic placeholder information retained but body and attachments replaced by: This message has not been downloaded from the server. This affects any iOS device running ios9, OS X devices on same email account unaffected. Issue unrelated to country, internet provider or email provider - the discriminator is pop/smtp on ios9.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

In response to LdyGatr,

As I said in bullet 4 of my précis I have already tried this and it did not work for me.  After approximately 12 hours the emails that I successfully forwarded from my iMac archive reverted to the "This message has not been downloaded....".  This experience has also be noted by other posters on other threads.  I would not rely on the emails in the newly set up account remaining there for long.

As an aside the trick to getting the pop option has been a badly kept apple user secret for some time.  I am also worried that server storage costs or some such incentive has driven apple to attempt to move people to imap. 

In response to Will 616. I had submitted the problem to the apple feedback page. I wonder how many prople have? This is a BIG problem.

TTake a look at the thread "https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7221489. It has got some real momentum and a push to get people providing feedback. Might be worth you lending your weight to that one as well. Can't hurt and large numbers of user feedback is the only way to make the negative publicity that another patch will bring, a worthwhile cost/benefit assessment.

I have submitted feedback here too and on all the threads you posted. As some people here are saying they have spoken with Apple and made them aware of the problem (I tried that and got cut off with no attempt to recontact me) - I'm appalled that we have to beg Apple to address such a serious problem.  I'm fortunate my emails also go to my laptop as my iphone and ipad are currently useless for email as the content continues to disappear.

Excellent!

Thank you for taking the time to express in detail what we all are experiencing.

I've just come off a support call from an Apple rep and I was surprised he had not heard of the problem.

He went away and came back and confirmed there was a problem and that Apple are working on it and he his going to come back to me tomorrow.

He mentioned moving things to IMAP, but my ISP doesn't provide IMAP. It might be the UK falling behind in this area but I have two significant email accounts with different ISPs who only provide POP3/SMTP support and this has caused me a major headache.

What is worse is that I thought it was just mails prior to the upgrade that had been compromised but I'm now finding that emails sent since the upgrade are also being compromised.

All in all its a very poor state of affairs and makes my Apple devices basically unusable with POP3/SMTP accounts!

TThere's no issue with pop/smtp but the very fact that it requires such a unintuitive work around to get the pop option when setting up an email account demonstrates to me that Apple have a preference for imap. For our situation and the management of the families email traffic pop is definitely the better option. I don't know why Apple are trying to push everyone to imap. I have a theory it may be to do with device storage and the impact hat storage of large amounts of unique data (unlike a song for example) has on backup sizes and Apple server capacity. However, I have no evidence for this just my cynical nature!! So, pop is not out of date and for a lot of users it represents the best option - particularly if you are security conscious about leaving emails on a providers server (correct) or need access to emails when connectivity is poor, unavailable or expensive.

I had the same problem a few days ago when I downloaded IOS 9.01.  I lost most of my gmail inbox.  Apparently they were all in trash so that I slowly move them back to the inbox.  My work around for the time being is to download the iphone gmail app (mail.google.com) ... and delete my iphone gmail account. The gmail app seems to integrate better with mail and works just fine.  However, you need to recover your gmail inbox first...

I updated to ios9.01 and I wasn't able to open attachments either, I just deleted my email account and readded it. I was able to open all my attachments after that. hope this helps

I'm practicing without a license here as I'm only a user with no IT expertise but my understanding of this e-mail problem ("This message has not been downloaded from the server") is as follows:

• iOS 9 devices that use POP and not IMAP functionality for incoming mail 'lose' visibility of mail content as soon as the original mail has been downloaded from the server to your PC/laptop e.g. Outlook account.
• The only way around this is to have an e-mail account with an IMAP incoming mail server functionality where mails are saved on the mail provider server and mirrored on your iOS device.

My issue with the above is my e-mail provider (GMX, Germany) charges for an account with IMAP incoming server functionality as an upgrade whereas my existing POP account is free. There are e-mail providers out there who don't charge for IMAP functionality. I don’t want to have to pay for my mail address as, whilst it may only be a few €s/£s per month, times it by multiple household accounts and over the years it will be a substantial sum. I don't want to have to change my email address after so many years (think of the consequences, what a nightmare!) so for those of you who find yourselves in my unenviable position, I see the available options as follows:

• Apple introduce a fix for the current issue asap allowing POP mail users to continue to be able to view mails in iOS devices once they’ve been downloaded from the mail provider’s server to PCs/laptops – yes please
• If a fix is not forthcoming then ‘downgrade’ to iOS 8.4 – I’d rather not as I understand taking such action is not without risk – no thanks
• Await contract renewal timing for current iOS device and replace Apple with an Android product – over to you Apple, think of all the many customers you are likely to lose as a result of not addressing this issue

Hope the above is an accurate interpretation of the problem and is of use to other readers.

updated my iPad Air to iOS 9.0.1 last night and now I'm getting "cannot get mail connection to server failed"

What is the problem? and what do I need to do to fix it?

please can someone advise me  

I agree  This is a disaster. NO emails should be deleted from ANYWHERE unless specifically done so by the user! So many emails are kept 'live' for future reference. Apple need to fix this super quick and provide guidelines to show effected users how to recover/restore what has been lost (if possible)

I have an iPad 3rd generation and have experienced the same issue, except on emails aged more than 1-week old.  Need recommendation on retrival method.

CClarke69 - I agree with your analysis. The only thing I would add is that from a security perspective I do not want an imap account as I do not want to leave my emails on a server. In addition, I often need access to emails when I have poor connectivity or no connectivity. what I would

say to all the recent posters is that whilst this forum allows us to share evidence and form an understanding there do not seem to be any solutions to this issue other than using the links provided in earlier posts to the apple feedback site and providing feedback to Apple of the issue and its impact on you as an apple customer. This is the only way to make the necessary patch to iOS commercially vfm to apple.