iPad Mail Troubles - Saved Drafts Disappear, Sent Mail Doesn't Show

No, I started, finished and sent each of the emails in question on the iPad. In each case, I did not save the email as a draft and then return to it, I just wrote it and sent it (or rather, I thought it had sent!).

Also, it has happened to me both on Wi-Fi and mobile data.

Yesterday, I deleted the Exchange account and recreated it from new, so I'll se if that has any effect, although it could take a while for me to find out because the issue only seems to occur every 2 or 3 months.

Yesterday, while I was at work invigilating at an art gallery, I spent 6 hours working on a piece of text in an email on my new iPad 4, saving it as a draft when it was time to close up. Today I wanted to finish off the text and it has disappeared!!!! I am totally gutted. I have been searching everywhere for traces of the document, but it appears to have gone completely. And it really does make things absolutely worse to discover that so many people have experienced this problem before me, notifying Apple through their own troubleshooting discussions page, only for the issue to apparently be completely ignored! Do Apple have no interest in reading through these messages? Have they put this forum here just for us to all wallow in the misery of our complaints with their products? Without their help on the matter this will not be resolved. I was given this recent model of iPad for my birthday, and despite there being no office software like Word available, thought that the problem could be resolved by composing texts in email draft and transferring these to Word via my PowerBook when at home, but within days of getting the iPad I am sorely disappointed with it.

How can Apple have allowed people to be complaining of this problem with their product for so many years and done nothing about it!?

I absolutely agree with the last post. Three years and no fix nor any acknowledgement from Apple. How arrogant. To think I chose Apple over competition because believed it to be bug free!

I have hardly any emails on this Ipad which is on IOS7 and is an Ipad4. Not set up any other email accounts so mine is a blank canvas. Twice have composed an email, clicked Cancel (silly choice of name for leading you to a next step where you get to Save) in order to choose Save to Drafts. Trouble is I have NO DRAFTS folder anywhere let alone any contents within it.

I will now try fiddling with Settings and report back if it works.

Grrrh"..........

Ok good news and thanks to whoever suggested this workaround originally.

I went into Settings and selected Mail, Contacts, Calendars. I hit its button so it was "Off" exited and pressed Mail on home screen. This asked me to set up a mail account as if completely new. Just ignored this and returned to Settings and turned Mail on again (green).

Back to Home screen, hit Mail and hey presto I have a Draft Folder displayed for the first time and my saved drafts are there.

Relief but wish Apple would sort this glitch. Hope this sorts out someone else!

Hi there!

It sounds like you're having a more complicated problem than I was, but just in case anyone out there is in the same boat, here's the solution (which I wasn't able to find in any forums thus far) to a simple problem I was having.

If you're using a single email account with iOS 7 on a device like an iPad 2, you've hit the cancel button on an email and selected "Save Drafts," but later realized that you're unable to find the draft folder anywhere, then the fix is actually pretty simple. All you have to do is open your email account, hit the "Mailboxes" tab in the top left corner, tap the "Edit" button (to the right of the "Mailboxes" header), select "Add Mailbox" from the first section, and then just tap "Drafts" and "Done."

Afterwards, just go to your Mailboxes tab and you should see the draft folder listed, in which will be whatever drafts you've saved so far.

Hope that's helpful! :)

I have been having the same problem of disappearing drafts. My settings on iPad were already using the Drafts folder on the server.

Here is what I found: my drafts from Yahoo have been ending up on Gmail. I primarily use Yahoo for mail, but have both accounts set up on my iPad. After reading this thread, I logged into Gmail and found several of my "missing" Yahoo drafts were in my Gmail Drafts folder.

I have had it happen before where I replied to a Yahoo email on my iPad that somehow my reply was sent out from Gmail instead of Yahoo, but I assumed I had accidentally clicked on the "From" line and changed it. This is definitely not the case on the Draft issue. I started an email on Yahoo from my PC and saved the draft. Then I made a change to the draft email on the iPad, and it vanished from Yahoo drafts. Now I found it in Gmail drafts. I see that my "default account" under "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" settings was Gmail, but that should not make it switch over an email that started on another account.

Hope this helps someone.

Whenever I have something go wrong on Mail I quit Mail like I describe below and then reset my iPad.

Double click the Home button to show the screen with running and recently used apps. Each app icon will have a sample page above it. Flick up on the page (not the app icon) and the page will fly away and the app icon will disappear. This quits that app. Then reset your device. Press and hold the Home and Sleep buttons simultaneously until the Apple logo appears. Let go of the buttons and let the device restart. That usually fixes your problem.

Hahaha.. iOS code is such a mess. I just bought a 100$ android tablet and it does everything my iPad (which if you read a few posts back, I sold) did, without needing to jailbreak and hack it. It also has not yet lost an email. I advise everyone to throw their iPad on ebay and get an android tablet from a reputable hardware company. Use the extra cash and treat yourself to dinner.

The lknance fix didn't work for me unfortunately.

My work email is Gmail based, I have just edited an existing draft on my iPad that I started on my PC, finished editing, tapped Cancel > Save Changes and the email disappears altogether and is sadly not to be found using the lknance solution, in any folder or in my totally separate, personal Yahoo email which is also on my iPad.

I've tested this by recreating the situation & the same happens again & again. If the original draft was created in the iPad there is no problem, it is just when the original was created on the PC in Gmail and then edited on the iPad.

Furthermore, I've also tested this same scenario, but instead of trying to save the edited draft on the iPad, actually trying to send it & despite getting the usual email sent swoosh sound effect the email does not appear in Sent Items & by trying to send it to myself, I've confirmed it is NOT received.

Apple - what are you doing about this? There is a clear issue here, if a draft is created in Gmail & then edited on iPad, it is disappearing regardless of whether attempting to save it as a draft again or send it. People are losing work, productivity, time & money because of this and it appears nothing has been done to fix it despite the issue having been raised here multiple times?

Frustrated.

Just happened to me again today. Email draft on which I worked for two days suddenly disappeared from Mail on iPad. No where to be found on iPad or other iCloud devices or at iCloud.com. On my iPad, the only email account I have ever used is iCloud. So it is not a gmail issue or anything like that. When it has happened before, I thought maybe I had accidentally deleted, maybe did a quick online search for help, but moved on. This was two days of work I know I cannot re-create, so I am unhappy. Have explored every possibility offered. Tested the delete function to see where things go when I consciously delete them, and nothing ever disappears. The changes to the draft go to Trash and the original draft remains there. Yes, one concludes that the people at Apple all know better than to use iPad or, more to the point I think, iOS, in my case iOS7, for important mail. If they used iPad and experienced problem, presumably they would fix it. Maybe they just can't figure out the problem, or have figured it out but can't come up with a fix. No, if they understood it, they could find a fix. So they lack the capacity to figure it out, or they just don't care. I don't expect any solution ever at this thread, but thought I would add my grievance because this was costly.

I use the mail app on ipad.

I Was having the same issue.

I Have several different email accounts and my sent and drafts would disappear without a trace.

to fix it I, went to the top where it says mailboxes and clicked on edit. a list of all my unread, VIP, trash, sent, drafts, Ect.

click on the ones you want seen and click done.

hope this helps

Thank you BebLo, without your post I wouldn't have been able to find my missing drafted email.

And to Apple, if you're listening, I'm a huge Apple fan-boy. But, I have to say the draft email UI in iOS 8 isn't intuitive at all. In previous iOS versions, there was a folder titled 'Draft' underneath the Inbox folder. Very clear and easy.

How would anyone possibly know that you need to tap and hold the icon that's always been used exclusively for new emails to see your drafts? I've worked for years designing UIs for a living. And in my opinion re-using an icon for a different function, after its meaning has been established by years of use, is a really bad idea. Maybe have a menu drop down when you tap the new mail icon instead? I realize that would mean tapping twice to create an email, which wouldn't be good either, but at least people wouldn't have to get out of bed at six in the morning, try it on their computer before Googling it just to find something that was built into the mail app all along.

I don't mean to be rude, but IMHO, it's bad design. And if you need help assessing a better UI design, I do work as a contractor. I'd be happy to help.

I'm a bit of a neophyte here.

Why not show the most recent or the correct response to the question first.

I have found that depressing and holding the compose icon works for new emails but does not for 'reply', 'reply all', or 'forward'.

Yes it took several pages to find this response but now I'm really disappointed because mine was a reply and that has just disappeared into the ether. I need to check another email and saved the draft gmail email. Now there is nothing of the saved draft reply. VERY annoying.

I Went under All mailboxes. Under that there were various icons including that of the draft mail. But instead of selecting that, I selected the mail account of interest (further down) then selected its draft folder and bingo! There were all the drafts I had long given up on.