“ This message cannot be displayed”

Aug 21, 2012 — iPhone Tip – Message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted. ... If this happens to you, you can work around the problem by first deleting your message. Then go find the message in your trash and move the message back to your in-box. You should now be able to read the message properly. However in my case, I got the message the second time even though I WAS able to recover the email as suggested above.

A better solution to this irritating problem. If you have your phone set to shake the phone to undo. All you have to do is delete the message shake the phone and click undo and it’s fixed.

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!

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.

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 spent a thankless half an hour in an online chat with Apple support. The Apple guy first had to look it up to see whether this was, I guess, on their radar as a problem and maybe already being worked on. After many minutes of back and forth, he finally admitted that there seem to be a lot of complaints in the community threads, and said he would advise Apple there’s a problem. As big an Apple fan as I am, I’m sorry to say this isn’t the first time I’ve had a well-known technical problem that Apple has been very slow or evasive about admitting anything’s wrong while they’re (presumably) trying to fix it. Frustrating. So far, fortunately, my iPhone has not been afflicted by this, and my laptop Mail is normal. Hey Apple — transparency is the best policy!

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 has to be a problem with the email system on these devices ( iPhone & iPad).

This only would happen on my old 2nd generation iPad Pro when I try sending something from safari to my self or if I bcc’d an email with the same address I was using to send to a recipient. All my Apple devices have current updates but today my relatively new (10 months) SE, update 14.4.2 experienced this problem for the first time.

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

The recipient still got the email but when they tried to respond they received a notice saying the email could not be sent as it was not accepted by recipient. This is BS.

Just activated my new iPhone and sent an email to myself to verify working and all I received was this ”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" the contents of my message was not there.

Clearly there is a problem and a poor user experience for sure. Given all the posts regarding this my phone appears to be working properly and reacting to an iOS defect as there is no formatting issue other than how my phone itself formatted it.

Might be worth trying again? It did work for us on three iPhones (2 x iPhone 7 and a 6s) and an oldish iPad mini but not always first time.

Apple should provide a proper fix, this is at best a workaround. It is indeed annoying.

Here is the original post that I found on Google, by chance, maybe they can help?

iPhone Tip – Message cannot be displayed because of the way it is formatted | Mike's Draft Article Bin (michaelmilette.com)

Apparently you can chat online to Apple Support - I got as far as where you click to chat but don’t have the t8me to do it. Does anyone have the time to do this and show them this thread and ask for a solution?

Yes, it's very silly of Apple not to find a solution. After all, when I send an email from my new and fully up-to-date iPad, I get this message, so have no copy of it, nor a bcc, yet the message gets delivered and I can read the bcc on WebMail from where I send it back to my iPad and it displays perfectly.

Do Apple really think that it's acceptable that their own machine cannot display its own messages, but can display those messages perfectly when sent back to that machine?? Huh?

Come one, Apple, this has been around for years apparently, it's high time you put some brainpower onto it and solved this very very very silly problem !!!!

The truth of the matter is blindingly obvious, that Apple has simple not been bothered to fix this silly problem - because people like me are so small that we may be safely ignored. We'll buy iPads anyway for other reasons, so there's no need at all to do anything about this. It's of course appaling customer service. But then as you're a very big boy, why should you take any notice of minions like me? And 'all' I have to do to read my own messages is to go to WebMail and send them back. I would like to know from Apple it they think this is acceptable for one of their latest iPads? Is it Apple? What's your view? The reason we need to know is so that we may correctly understand your current attitude to customer service. Are you really too big to answer?

P

Note that if you can set up WebMail, you will find both your sent and bcc emails and can send a copy back to your device. Otherwise, as this problem stretches back years, we can be sure that Apple will continue to ignore us. Is there any way to get their attention onto this? It is surely BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS that this is an internal software problem - in that there's no problem at all with the messages themelves as sent. Even the little Apple window at the side can read the message and display the first bit!!!! The problem only arises that the e-mail software introduces a display problem itself, when none actually exists. All they have to do is to remove this tiny glitch. Is this maybe too small a problem for them? Is this simple logic too BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS for their complicated brains? Oh dear; what a miserable outfit!! COME ON APPLE ... TIME TO GET YOUR SKATES ON!!! Your response to date is rated 1 out of the usual 5, although I'd prefer to give you a firm '0' for your complete failure to enge properly, sensibly and technically with your customers over this. P

Since post on 7th Feb not had same problem occur just a couple of emails at the time deleting and reopening didn’t cure problem. Funny thing was if opened on MacBook Pro email was ok until opened on iPad or iPhone then got corrupted when went to read again. Using webmail doesn’t bring up the original email only an HTML version. Think problem is to do with embedded logos in the email and iOS gets confused as to what they are. Bit like me being charged for a picture message when I included a price in a message using the pound sign. It is part of the text keyboard ! Not an emoji etc.