“ This message cannot be displayed”

Count me in: “This message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted. Ask the sender to send it again using a different format or email program.text/plain”

Incidentally, this just started happening *after* I updated to 14.1.

In my case, it seems to be only the email responses I’ve sent, which I’ve set to automatically cc to me. Thus, I am the “sender” referred to in the message above, and the emails in question were all sent from the same iPhone 10 on which I’m having the problem.

I have the same problem with my iPhone 11 after running the latest update. I found a work around on another forum.

=> Delete the message, then go to your trash and move the message back to your inbox. The email should then be readable. Not convenient, but it works.

Apparently this is not a new issue with Apple but seems to have cycled around with various updates. The original message on the other forum was old. Hopefully Apple will fix it on the next update.

Hi there lwalton,

We understand you're experiencing an issue with viewing emails on your iPad Air, and we'd like to share some resources that can help.

Get started here: Search for and view email on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

The steps here may also help: If an app unexpectedly quits, stops responding, or won’t open

Cheers!

Thanks for that tip, danfrommequon, I look forward to trying it.

All, please submit iOS feedback reports on this bug. The more reports, the more chance Apple will finally take this seriously and fix it. I don’t believe Apple monitors this space.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

That does not solve the problem: it simply turns off the functionality we need.

Everyone, a reminder to submit feedback! https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Sadly, there is no Mail feedback option, so you have to choose iPhone or iPad.

I’ve had the same issue after updating to IOS 14.2 on a iPhone 7

i found a workaround from a post dated in 2012 on another website where the same problem was apparently occurring in IOS 3, solved in IOS 4 and recurred in IOS 5. (Apple you’ve had plenty if time to eradicate the bug)

The workaround still seems to work for this issue in IOS 14:

• Delete message, but don’t empty trash
• Open trash, find message, and move it back to Inbox.

The text will have been restored, no idea why, but it seems to work

Hopefully Apple will resolve the issue in the next update.

Apple's Mail app has been buggy for quite a while now, actually. One other bug is that it keeps automatically fetching e-mails even when it is set to "Manually" in Settings.

Anyway, I noticed this "message cannot be displayed" issue as well, basically only on e-mails that I send to myself from my iPhone or iPad. The bug is still present in iOS / iPad OS 14.4.

When you send an e-mail to yourself via the Mail app, you essentially end up with 2 copies of this e-mail. One arrives into your "Inbox" folder and the other copy stays in your "Sent" folder. The Mail app doesn't seem to correctly switch between the two copies when tapping between them. This might be what is contributing to the randomness of the e-mail being "readable" or "bad".

Anyway, here's what I found out in my testing (it gets a bit complex):

After you send yourself an e-mail from the Mail app, whether the received e-mail is "readable" or "bad" depends on where you open it first.

1- If you tap on the e-mail in the Inbox folder first, it will be random (so it seems).

• If it is "bad" in Inbox, the copy in Sent is also "bad". If you delete the copy in Sent, the one in Inbox will become "readable".
• If it is "readable" in Inbox, the copy in Sent is also "readable". If you delete the copy in Sent, the one in Inbox remains "readable".

2- If you tap on the e-mail in the Sent folder first, it will always (so it seems) be "readable". If you then tap on it in the Inbox folder, it will be "readable" there as well.

• If you delete it from Inbox, the copy in Sent will become "bad".
• If you delete it from Sent, the copy in Inbox will remain "readable".

So basically the bottom line is this:

If you send an e-mail to yourself and it ends up showing "message cannot be displayed" when you open it in Inbox, go to the Sent folder and delete the copy in there. That should make the one in Inbox readable.

I have the same issue on Bcc’d emails...I’m on IPad Air 14.4.2. It’s intermittent but just recently started happening.....Things that worked for me...

1. Deleting the email from the sent folder....can read message in inbox. Or
2. moving inbox message to trash and back into inbox... able to read message in inbox. Or
3. setting a default font when composing the Email also seems to prevent it. Before starting to type email tap on Aa and choose a default font....
4. .

I think I have found a fix that is working for me: It has to do with the bcc option:

1. Open mail app, Compose, then put your email address in To: field
2. Backspace over (delete) the Cc/Bcc: field completely
3. Enter subject
4. enter message

Then click up arrow to send.

I then got the "This message cannot be displayed..." when opening that email or opening it in the Sent mailbox..

Next, I created a New Message and let iPhone automatically put in the Cc/Bcc field.

After entering to, subject, message then sending this message (up arrow)

This time NO FORMATTING ERROR.

(I'm not sure if this is permanent fix or not, so looking for feedback from others.)

“Moving” a message to trash and moving it back, worked. “Deleting” a message and moving it back did not work.

I guess it’s nice that this helps but this is NOT an acceptable fix. Apple did something in an update.

I woke up this morning to a new update but it doesn’t list anything about our problem.

lwalton,

Thanks for the update.

While the article titles may not specifically mention the issue you're experiencing, they may help resolve it.

If the issue continues after those steps, reach out for further help here: Get Support

Take care!

I’m having the same problem. Everything was working before. I have an iPhone 11 running 14.0.1. Was working before.

I tried emailing myself. I get the same problem. Am going to test emailing from one of my other accounts and see if the problem persists. Wondering if the latest rev caused an issue? I am not sure when I updated my iPhone. I can check for the last email I sent that said “sent from my iPhone” to get an idea of when it was ok, and a range for when it went south...

I’m having the same problem. I’ve now updated to 14.2 and it is happening on my iPad and iphone .

I rang AppleCare and they were unable to resolve.

they suggested I deleted and reloaded my service provider but that didn’t help.

I think it’s a problem with IOS 14 onwards.

the weird thing that it doesn’t do it to every email but I can’t see any correlation between the emails it effects and the ones it doesn’t.

hope Apple solve this problem soon as very annoying but it’s good to see others having same problem.

Yes, it worked just fine for me. Tried it today, Nov 20, 2020. Not sure why it didn't work for you. I'm using an iPhone 11, software version 14.2.

Once you put the message in the trash, then go to Trash and swipe the message left. Select "more => "move message" => "inbox."

Mine came in just fine with the message intact. Hope it works for you.

I just tried this and it didn't help. I'm getting the message "This message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted..." on every email I send from my new iPad Air 4 with the automatic bcc setting activated. This is happening to original emails as well as my replies to other incoming emails. However, my emails are being received by others, and the text is partially displayed in the preview panel.

The alert message advises me (as the sender) to "send it again using a different format or email program" but I don't see any relevant settings options in IOS that can be adjusted by the user. I also noted that at the bottom of the alert message it cryptically says "text/plain".

Grrr.