Help! Random encoding on email. NOT on iMac, ONLY iOS devices

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Level 1

16 points

Help! Random encoding on email. NOT on iMac, ONLY iOS devices

For 5 months, Apple tech support and engineers have been going in circle with me about an issue with iOS Mail mailboxes - they say NO ONE else has EVER experienced this, and after a hundred hours with them, they still can’t figure it out. I don’t believe I can be the only one who’s experienced this.

Backstory (all caps are for emphasis, not yelling :^).

I use Apple Mail and was thrilled to learn I could store business emails on it, putting some of my .com email (Bluehost) and Earthlink accounts in designated mailboxes on my iCloud Mail account. BUT sporadic, unexplained encoding issues have started happening to non-icloud mail (when viewed on IOS devices only.)

E.G. I created a new iCloud mailbox for a client named “Cubby”: I moved Cubby email from Mail Inbox and Sent to this new “Cubby iCloud” mailbox. That way I could access that client’s mail from any device - iMac, iPad Pro, iPhone - w/o being at home, or w/o having to scroll through hundreds in the inbox.

In mid December weird encoding bits started appearing in the middle of text on emails in these folders. ONLY non-iCloud mail, ONLY visible on the iPad and iPhone. Sometimes big blocks of color too. (See below) The exact same emails are NORMAL on IMAC.

This is RANDOM. Sometimes they change BACK to normal. No telling. But it sure isn’t professional to reply to a client with the text below all garbled. So I contacted Apple In January and the rest is... not history.

Apple has put me through the wringer and still can’t figure out what is happening. They can’t even answer this basic question: Is it possible email from other servers (mine are Bluehost and Earthlink) cannot be decoded properly when moved to iCloud mailboxes?

We have erased the iPad. Twice. Deleted all accounts, then reinstalled. Screenshots, Sys Diagose, Capture Data... you name it, we have tried it.

Yesterday, even an iCloud one went wonky. See below: First on my iMac, then on the iPad.

Please, has anyone else experienced this? And if so, would you be willing to contact Apple Tech Support to report it? Being the squeaky wheel is frustrating.

Posted on May 30, 2020 1:15 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Michael Black

Level 10

80,647 points

May 30, 2020 6:27 PM in response to Lizzieat

First of all, those other accounts (the EarthLink and others) are not going into your iCloud account. The Apple email client is simply independently accessing the separate accounts you’ve added to it. Along with iCloud, it looks like you have three other independent email accounts set up in the email client. Those independent email accounts have nothing to do with iCloud - their emails are not processed, sent or delivered by Apple’s iCloud email service. Each account is handled by the account provider’s email services, not Apple’s.

So the first thing I would suggest is to contact EarthLink about the EarthLink messages with coding issues. Similarly contact the other email service providers about issues with messages through those accounts.

I have 8 email accounts in my MacOS and iOS email clients (my hosting service, gmail, work Office 365, and my iCloud email) - the client works with all, but those email accounts, and the services hosting them, are entirely separate and independent.

Apple’s email hardware is nit processing and delivering your EarthLink or stolen.com emails - those are handled by the companies offering and hosting those accounts. What you show looks To me like processing issues on the server side from them.

It’s either that or an issue with the iOS email client app and those specific Email account service provider’s. In that case, you could try using an alternate iOS email client app with them - there are numerous alternate email clients in the App Store. But iCloud as a service has nothing to do with this.

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Answer 2

zinacef

Level 10

88,810 points

May 30, 2020 5:20 PM in response to Lizzieat

Personally I haven’t experienced what you’ve described but then again I don’t own a business and I’m not a power user of email. Also from my experience and visiting other Apple-centric forums, I’ve always heard to never really use iCloud mail for business purposes.

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Answer 3

May 30, 2020 9:29 PM in response to Lizzieat

I agree with other's here as well. This does not appear to be an Apple issue. I actually think it has something more to do with how the emails (announcements) are set up by the Senders. It looks more like an html layout, possibly not optimized for mobile devices. In other words, they may be reusing old formats or software as new ones tend to optimize for Accessibility and mobile devices. So, it may not even be an Earthlink issue but one with the Originators of the mail itself.

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Help! Random encoding on email. NOT on iMac, ONLY iOS devices

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