Draft Emails Without PDF Attachments

nigelstrickland wrote:

Email saved with PDF attachments on my mac DO NOT HAVE THE PDF Attachment on my iPhone. For 8 months or so, i have had this issue and nobody at Apple insure or on the support phone lines are able to fix this. Everything from wiping to clean reinstall has been tried. HOWEVER if i create the emails outside of mac mail on the web email versions of the accounts the pdfs DO APPEAR in drafts on my phone, therefore the issues are in the iOS somewhere. I have been told this is being looked into in America, since last September and every update i have doesn't have a fix. Any thoughts ?

When I create an email with a PDF attachment on my MBP in my iCloud account the attachment appears in the email in my sent folder, and if I email it to myself it also appears in my inbox with attachment. However, if I just save the message to drafts the attachment is not attached on my iPhone (although the attachment icon appears), and if I send it from the iPhone the pdf is not attached. Is this what you are observing?

Interesting; I wouldn’t normally have encountered this.

SravanKrA wrote:

I just tested it on My Macbook Pro and I did not find any issue with saving a Draft email with PDF Attachment and later finding it on the Draft Folder with all attachments

See the pic below which is self-explanatory

This issue is that when the Mac drafts folder syncs to an iPhone the attachment is missing in the Mail app on the iPhone.

SravanKrA wrote:

These don't sync between devices Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, Notes, Voice Memos, shared photos, iCloud Photos, and emails. Each device syncs to the email account server which may be Google, iCloud, AOL, Exchange, Outlook, Yahoo, or any Other. Please see the pic below.

If one of the devices is not connected to the internet then it may seem to you that they are not syncing. This link could assist you in pinpointing internet issues, a crucial step for synchronization. Internet not

Thank you for your extensive research. I will add my experience, specifically with iCloud.

• Start a message with attachment and save to iCloud drafts
• Check iCloud.com/mail - the message with attachment is in the drafts folder
• Check iOS Mail app, iCloud mail drafts folder - the message is in the drafts folder, but minus the attachment

These don't sync between devices Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, Notes, Voice Memos, shared photos, iCloud Photos, and emails. Each device syncs to the email account server which may be Google, iCloud, AOL, Exchange, Outlook, Yahoo, or any Other. Please see the pic below.

If one of the devices is not connected to the internet then it may seem to you that they are not syncing. This link could assist you in pinpointing internet issues, a crucial step for synchronization. Internet not available WiFi and Cellular … - Apple Community

I’ve done additional testing. The attachment does appear in icloud.com/mail -drafts, so this is most likely an iOS problem.

I’ve reported it in the beta Feedback app.

I just tested it on My Macbook Pro and I did not find any issue with saving a Draft email with PDF Attachment and later finding it on the Draft Folder with all attachments

See the pic below which is self-explanatory

Test 1: Gmail Draft email fetching from iCloud:- During my initial testing, I encountered an issue when creating a draft email in the Mac Mail app on my MacBook using a Gmail account. When I later opened the same draft on my iPhone, the attachment placeholders were visible, but the actual attachments failed to display.

Test 2: iCloud Draft email fetching from iCloud:- To investigate further, I repeated the same process using an iCloud email account. This time, when I accessed the draft on my iPhone, the attachments were visible — but not without some glitches, likely due to the size of the attached files.

Inference: Based on these observations, it seems the issue lies specifically with Gmail when accessing files from iCloud, whereas iCloud email does display the attachments, albeit with occasional performance issues possibly related to file size.

Test 1 Results

See the pic below

Test 2 Results:

Then I tested it attaching the PDF on an iCloud email, the full story is shown pictorially below.

Pic 1: iCloud mail attachment on my Mac

Pic 2: The same Draft Message on an iPhone iOS 18.3.1

Pic 1 (Mac)

Pic 2: on iOS

nigelstrickland wrote:

Yes saved on your MacBook pro in drafts, but was the attachment there on your iPhone in drafts? Mine aren't and a lot of people i know have the same issue as me. Thanks

As I said, no, the attachment does not appear in Drafts on my iPhone, but it DOES appear in Drafts if I log in to icloud.com/mail. Thus, it is syncing to iCloud, but iCloud is not syncing it to my iPhone.

Email saved with PDF attachments on my mac DO NOT HAVE THE PDF Attachment on my iPhone.

The pic below is self-explanatory