Level 1

62 points

“ This message cannot be displayed”

On my 3rd gen iPad Air, the Mail app has started displaying the error message:

”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.”

about one time in 10 messages. It has so far only happened in emails that I BBC’d myself. IOW, I am the sender. And I can see the first few words of the original email in the sidebar. So it’s a Mail glitch?

Any know the solution? Thanks.

iPad Air, iPadOS 14

Posted on Oct 7, 2020 7:23 AM

Top-ranking reply

Perplexer-

Level 1

19 points

Posted on Feb 17, 2021 1:46 AM

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.

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134 replies

TyMarRo

Level 1

4 points

Feb 11, 2021 6:53 PM in response to prue1

A complete clean install doesn’t help this problem. Hey Apple! I dropped $1200.00 on this device which is totally useless without a working email. Fix this now, it’s been a known issue for too f’n many years.

Feb 17, 2021 1:54 AM in response to Perplexer-

Both okay just now. However I have hearing aids and the mail arriving announcement nearly blows my head open.

So I set it to off in mail settings. Not entirely happy with that, I tried to restore it. Nothing. Have rebooted phone, still nothing. Giving up and going to bed here down under.

Mar 7, 2021 3:23 PM in response to lwalton

Since I don’t see any answers

I’ll put my two cents worth in

I recently sent an email to my lawyer and got this message on my email in sent folder, message can’t be displayed...

I came across a reason :

that the recipient server is not accepting the email because of a word or phrase that is blocked.

probably to block spam

if your recipient will accept the email, then your message will appear

lwalton Author

Level 1

62 points

Mar 7, 2021 3:48 PM in response to Johnnybell56

I initiated this lengthy thread. In my case, and many others', the problem was occurring only in messages that I had sent and BCC'd to myself. In other words, it was the BCC that "cannot be displayed".

Seems different from your experience, Johnnybell. Did the undisplayable message appear when you got your lawyer to accept the message? How did you come across the reason?

For reasons that are far beyond my intelligence, I have not seen this "cannot be displayed" message for at least 2-3 months.

Cosy25

Level 1

4 points

Mar 10, 2021 12:54 AM in response to charontheboatman

i haven’t got bcc to myself on so can’t be problem and also it is occasional emails I’m receiving not sending. As said before believe problem is due to companies including embedded logos with internet links. I.E. company sending email to say item posted and having a logo/link to the carrier company to enable tracking of the parcel. Can view email on iPhone and iPad as a forward to myself from MacBook Pro.

TxbluJ

Level 1

4 points

Mar 23, 2021 5:33 AM in response to SP-ALB

Thanks this worked for me, too. Yes inconvenient but it worked. Also, yes, this has been around for a long time. I had it on my 6S, then my X and now on my 12 pro. I just found your suggestion. It’s always been a problem with my own copy of email messages that I bcc myself sent from my iPhone so that I have a record on my MacBook Pro.

Cosy25

Level 1

4 points

Apr 1, 2021 2:06 AM in response to FrankDylan

Seem to have two problems here causing the message Can't Display. "One" the people using Bcc which can be switched off to cure it. "Two" problem I have and some others when we receive emails with web links and embedded logos in them e.g. a link to a courier delivering a parcel or restaurant order email with an embedded logo link to its website. Can this thread be split ? as the Bcc problem has a work around but the embedded logo problem seems not to have been resolved or a temporary work around found.

Apr 11, 2021 2:27 PM in response to FZAW

I have been reading about this for months now; absolute BS and no sign from Apple that it's being resolved... pathetic, as it's bloody annoying and time wasting. But there's plenty of stuff like that - I am at present trying to understand why I'm getting no sound alerts for emails etc, despite checking the settings countless times... no easy answers.

FZAW

Level 1

15 points

Apr 11, 2021 3:47 PM in response to JohnKouvelis

i had the same problem and sometimes resetting network setting fixed the alert sounds temporarily. Now I’ve given up but unfortunately sound alerts stills seems to working for all the wrong messages.

My work around for items I send to myself from Safari is to send them to my text/iMessage at least giving me access to the link when I want it.

An update on my “msg can’t be displayed” problem is after reboot of my appliance my recipient was able to send an rmsil to my gmail account but not my optonline account. Stranger still was that my daughter sent me a test email and that worked but I still could not reply with a bcc attached, she got garbage back, but without she saw my response.

lwalton Author

Level 1

62 points

Oct 12, 2020 5:42 PM in response to ryane77

Thanks for trying. Neither of those Apple Help pages seems relevant to my issue. Maybe I’m just dense.

lwalton Author

Level 1

62 points

Nov 10, 2020 9:26 AM in response to applesbyte

It's still happening, on iPhone (latest SE) and iPad Air (early 2020), even after the iOS updates. And yes, it is only (I think) the emails that I have CC'd to myself. A minority of those.

darby114

Level 1

9 points

Nov 16, 2020 6:52 AM in response to lwalton

Same issue here on an iPhone 12 with latest iOS.

It’s gotta be an Apple issue...

Nov 17, 2020 3:59 PM in response to lwalton

Same issue here... iPad 14.2 v

Tenney99

Level 1

4 points

Nov 19, 2020 10:34 AM in response to lwalton

I have this question too

Nov 19, 2020 2:31 PM in response to Tenney99

I hope Apple are monitoring this because, when i talked to Apple a couple of weeks ago, they said they hadn’t heard of this problem!!

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“ This message cannot be displayed”