“ This message cannot be displayed”

I solved this by toggling off "Always Bcc Myself" then manually Bccing myself then toggling "Always Bcc Myself" back on.

Try putting it in trash and then returning it to your inbox for sent box. That works for me. This seems to happen only when you BCC yourself.

StuyV, deleting the sent email also works for me. I am wondering if the problem is that there is limited space in the sent folder, so that as you remove sent messages, more space is created and the issue goes away. IOS 13 had this problem, but it was with the inbox... if you had too many messages in your inbox, the oldest messages disappeared. With IOS 14, that problem disappeared, but now we have an issue with the sent folder. I have a brand new ipad air 4 and I didnt have this issue for several days until emails started to build up in my sent folder and now I have this problem all the time. I am also wondering if the amount of emails in other folders will affect this as well, which is why it seems the issue happens randomly, i.e. clean out some emails in the inbox, more space created, problem goes away until more emails build up. But thanks for the suggestion to delete the sent email. That works!

Some additional info on the problem where you have bcc'd to yourself. If you do the trick of deleting the message in the inbox, and then moving it back from the bin to the inbox, it now displays ok, but the copy in the sent folder has been deleted. If you try moving the message from the inbox to the sent folder (just for a laugh) it disappears completely from all folders.

When composing an email, on the keyboard display directly above the top row of letters

q,w,e,r,t, etc, there is a line where you can choose a font.

tap on Aa symbol, next tap on default font, and next choose a font. I think this works

because the font is not plain text which seems to be part of the problem.

Just did the phone turn off and back on, the mails are okay now.

PS that putting bcc’d message in bin and back worked. Very “Apple”.

but anxiety about what recipient is seeing on original message.

apple PLEASE FIX

This does work. Deleting the message and then moving it from the deleted folder back to the inbox also works (usually). There must be a clue here that Apple support can use in fixing this problem. I’m using iOS 14.3 on an iPhone 8. I began having this problem several months ago.

Yes same issue here with IPad Pro 2, and yes deleting the offending email and moving back to the inbox does work. But how can an email written on the IPad suddenly be unreadable by that same IPad?????? The main thing is that the offending email does seem to be readable by the person it was sent too, you just can’t read it yourself unless you delete and move back. Hopefully an update will fix the issue - one day soon.

It sounds to me as if the device was updated whilst the mail app was running.

Solution is to force a stop by pressing the sleep key until the bar appears, then pressing and holding the home key until the app restarts- could take more than 10-15 secs for the app to reload.

This should fix the issue going forward, but won't fix existing emails.

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.)

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/

Hasn’t worked for me. Occurred again today with an email containing logo/links to someone’s web site. Couldn’t read on iPad or iPhone says cannot be displayed because of way it is formatted , multiparty/related. Before I did anything with it went to my MacBook Pro and it opened ok on it. But can’t find way of opening it on iPad or iPhone. Except by forwarding it back to myself and it reads ok but original stays corrupted. Has to be bugs in mail app on iPad and iPhone. As once moved or deleted by them MacBook won’t open it correctly, as they have then worked on the email view format. Obviously a problem only apple can solve. So please Apple solve it. We’ve had another update and still not solved.

Doesn’t work for me. As mentioned elsewhere problem seems to be with inbuilt links/ logos within the email that iPhone and iPad fall over on. Can open the problem emails on MacBook Pro ok if haven’t moved or deleted them on the iPhone or iPad. It’s an iPhone/ iPad mail problem.

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.