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

Saved a draft on Comcast IMAP account on my iMac. I opened and edited it on my iPad then hit Cancel, Save Draft. Moved on to other emails then planned to go back to my saved draft and it was gone. Not on server anymore, not on any devices, just gone. Tried all the fixes here and none worked. I just found a fix on this link: http://www.imore.com/how-quickly-access-draft-emails-iphone-and-ipad

Holding down on the New Message button in upper right corner pulls up a window with all drafts from all accounts. Was able to open up my missing draft! Trying to send it (to myself) was quirky. As others here have noted, it just disappears, not in Sent folder, not in my Inbox either. But from that New Message button trick, I was able to Open, Select All, Copy and begin again in a new email. When I saved it as a draft from iPads email, it worked fine.

RooneyR wrote:
I hit Cancel, then Save, and the email appears for a moment in the Drafts folder, then disappears. I can't find it anywhere. And the messages were not in the Trash or Deleted Messages folders nor in any MobileMe folders... just gone.

I am having the same problem. I created an email using gmail on my MacBook and saved it in Drafts. Later, I opened it in the mail app on the iPad, modified it, and clicked Send. A message appeared telling me that it cannot be sent and that I should check the outgoing settings, although just before that I successfully sent another email. So I wanted to attempt to send it again, but I couldn't find the email anywhere. I looked in the Drafts, Sent Mail, All Mail, everywhere! It was GONE! And that email was important (of course)!

I was having the same issue and I think I found the answer by digging into the mail settings.

This would be for IMAP users....

Settings

Mail, Contacts, Calenders

Click on your email address on the top of the settings page

Click on the Account button at the top (should be your email address too)

Advanced Button at the Bottom

Then you can Click on "Drafts Mailbox" "Sent Mailbox" and "Deleted Mailbox" and Specify that the checked mailboxes under these are the correct folders "On the Server" and not "On My iPad"

That way, when you send an email, it uploads itself to the server rather than being saved somewhere in the depths of your ipad.

Hope this helps! I can't believe how deeply this is buried in settings!

I see the choice of mailboxes when using IMAP like Gmail as described by Aurement. I tested it out with my gmail account and set drafts to be saved on the ipad, and they get now saved to both the ipad and gmail server. I think with POP3 it just gets saved on the ipad.

After some frustation, I finally noticed (dah) if I go to Accounts (listed under Mailboxes, looks like just a repeat of Mailboxes) instead of Mailboxes and I tap on the email address, detailed folder show up, there are the drafts, the notes, the sent items, etc. Why was this so difficult?

Let's make sure you are looking in the right place. Click on the mail icon and get to where it shows Mailboxes on the left top. Under that there is "Inboxes" like a header and under the inboxes it shows one line for each email account you have set up. Further down there is another header called Accounts. Under accounts it lists the email accounts again.

When you select an email address from the accounts, that is where it shows sent items, drafts and Trash.

Dear All,

I have recently experienced the same issue.

Mal created, send pressed, not in drafts, not in outbox, certainly not with the recipient.

I have hard reset, powered down for a long period but not yet, deleted and recreated the accounts.

I am not seeing a solution in this thread, am I missing something?

My two accounts are POP.

Any ideas?

Bob

THANK YOU Autrement!!!

Your solution just saved me a great deal of future frustration with an easy solution rig at my fingertips! It just took me two seconds and I already tested it!

I was having issues saving ANY draft. It acted like it was saving the draft, showing a progress bar, and then nothing, anywhere, ACK.

Now, problem solved!! :)

Bernie

I've had a disappeared draft as well, last night. I had begun composing it on mail.app, on my laptop, and then I made edits on my iPad and chose "Save." It's not in the trash or anywhere else, and I've also looked in mail.app on my laptop and tried my provider's webmail interface.

I've seen other threads where people lost mail in other folders as well. (But who knows if this is the same or a different issue, or a related one.)

So, after trying a variety of fixes (including everything mentioned here), I've deleted the account from my iPad: I don't trust the app enough to give it any access to my account at this point.

I'm running iOS 5.1 on an iPad 3 and using IMAP. I had only one mail account.